It’s coming. And we all know it.

For the last several months, Microsoft has been touting it’s “Media Center” PC’s. A platform through which people will be able to dispose of both their traditional television and their cable bill (well, we can only HOPE that we’ll be able to get rid of the cable bill.) Thereby, enveloping their entertainment needs on one see-all do-all box.
Two months ago, Apple “officially” announced what is now known as “Apple TV”. Allowing users to stream media – virtually ANY media – from their home computers to their television wirelessly. Who needs a library of DVD’s when you can buy your movies on iTunes and be able to stream it to your home television? Didn’t finish the movie before your big dinner date? Transfer it to your iPhone and finish it on the train. It’s that simple. Literally.

So we know that, with this new technology, a transformation in the way we look at entertainment is bound to happen. But who is really planning for it?

ABC, NBC and CBS are all making various deals or creating proprietary websites where limited amounts of their content can be made viewable via the internet. However most of the time, it isn’t downloadable, its plastered with ads, and constant reported trouble with users and bugs in the interface.

Their effort, is all fine, well and good to start perhaps, but will the big corporations and broadcasters really be able to grasp the potential of the new market; combining social networking with traditional video-based entertainment?

Why have a video on an ad filled website when you can have a sponsor based videos covering an on-line social community? Why give the content limits when this new area of portable, stream-able, downloadable entertainment is at our fingertips?

ScribeMeida.Org has begun to explore this new territory and realize the potential for the next generation of entertainment possibilities.

Creating content on subjects ranging from Web 2.0, to Foreign Policy. A nitch has been carved out of a world currently overpopulated by 2 minute ‘Jackass’ videos and virally spread advertisements.

Concentrating on content for those in the professional space, and those in the public that “just want more information,” ScribeMedia produces 20 – 45 minute “Web Television” shows that propose to rase public interest though the mantra of intellectually passionate content for all.

Picking up speed producing content for groups like The London Review of Books and The Producers Guild of America. ScribeMedia delved into creating our own brand of informational entertainment, bringing thought leaders from around the business world, into our studio, to produce shows like War Reporters and Health In 30.

Proving that the link between on-line entertainment and television entertainment was inevitable, ScribeMedia has had the particular pleasure of having one of our programs released on Turner’s Healthy Living Channel, The Avian Flu: From Stuffy Nose To Pandemic, which brought to light the still highly-dangerous nature of this disease. Recently, Avian flu has perhaps become best known (or unknown as it may seem) as a forgotten story, plastered all over every newspaper and news story just last year, only to have this “impending crisis” dropped by the major media outlets in the name of higher ratings.

The simple boiled down truth of the matter is, the next generation of entertainment is right around the corner, and in the end, it will be companies with a vision like that of ScribeMedia.Org – endeavoring to bring the populace digital media that is both easily accessible and engagingly entertaining – left standing.
We need to think outside of the box that has become the center of every person’s home over the last fifty years.

The next generation is coming. And we all know it…

-Jason Kichline

As our media exploits continue to increase, I feel its time to publicize our already active Studio Rental Service.

People in the industry that need a clean professional space to work in, will enjoy having our doors open in the center of Manhattan’s Financial District. Our New York Studio can be rented with or without equipment, and rates vary depending on the time needed.

Our complete production studio houses DVX100 cameras, high quality studio fill lights, and a professional environment complete with simple backdrops and modular sets such as couches, chairs, tv anchor desk, etc.

Multicamera shoots will have the option of being mixed live through our multichannel DataVideo Digital Mixer and outputted to your portable storage device.

Our staff of professional media makers is always on hand to assist if needed.

Currently our studio is home to the monthly live broadcast “ “Truth in E-Learning” and the bi-weekly online magazine article “Managing REO”. Our crews have been hired to travel to the recent IQPC tradeshow in Phoenix, Arizona, and just last week we had the honor of filming the very controversial “London Review of Books: The Israeli Lobby” which can be viewed on our blog.

ScribeStudio works diligently to produce interesting, engaging multimedia content for our clients all across the country. We feel it’s time to make our New York production facilities more readily available to the media-makers of New York.

Those interested in studio rentals or national film crews to film everything from concerts to television shows to conferences should contact Jason Kichline at jason AT scribemedia DOT org.

Last March, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published an article in the London Review of Books. Entitled “The Israel Lobby: Does it Have too Much Influence on US Foreign Policy,” it drew swift charges of anti-Semitism in the editorial pages of American newspapers.

At root are passages like the following:

...the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.

Those attacking Mearsheimer and Walt suggest the duo outline a nefarious Jewish cabal with a stranglehold on American Mideast policy. Think smokey back rooms; think political and media domination; think subtle and sneaky manipulation of the unsuspecting, innocent gentile. Think historical stereotype.

Mearsheimer, Walt and their defenders counter that they neither suggest a cabal nor a monolithic Jewry driving the American body politic. Instead, a close alliance of disparate groups form a capital “L” Israeli Lobby that distorts US interests in the region. While this is lead by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Lobby includes Jews and Gentiles alike:

The Lobby also includes prominent Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, as well as Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, former majority leaders in the House of Representatives, all of whom believe Israel’s rebirth is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and support its expansionist agenda; to do otherwise, they believe, would be contrary to God’s will. Neo-conservative gentiles such as John Bolton; Robert Bartley, the former Wall Street Journal editor; William Bennett, the former secretary of education; Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former UN ambassador; and the influential columnist George Will are also steadfast supporters.

The above debate centers around these two perspectives as the panelists move among issues such as US-Israeli relations, the Middle East peace process, the origins of the Iraq War and Israeli settlement policy to name a few.

Panelists:

• John Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago.
• Shlomo Ben-Ami is a former Israeli foreign and security minister and the author of Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy.
• Martin Indyk is Director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution.
• Tony Judt is Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European Studies and Director of the Remarque Institute at New York University.
• Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies and Director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.
• Dennis Ross is Counsellor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace.

Moderator:

• Anne-Marie Slaughter is Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Bert G. Kerstetter ‘66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University.

---

The above debate took place at Cooper Union in New York City and was captured by ScribeMedia on behalf of the London Review of Books. A transcript of the event will be available shortly.

About the London Review of Books Founded in 1979, The London Review of Books is dedicated to carrying on the tradition of the English essay – giving contributors the space and freedom to develop their ideas at length and in depth.

To subscribe please visit the London Review of Books Web site.

Inquiries about this video, DVDs and the debate can be made to michael [at] scribemedia [dot] org.

I went to the Jazz Standard in New York City the other night. Hadn’t been there before but will be back again. The acoustics are good and the food’s great. They music? Obviously depends on who you’re there to see.

I saw a violinist. A college friend invited me. I was more interested in seeing my friend than I was the music for the very simple reason that of all the biases I’ve developed in my life, one that tops my list is that the violin is not a Jazz instrument.

It just doesn’t swing. It doesn’t have the vocal earthiness of a horn. It doesn’t have the stomp and swagger of piano.

That’s not to say the violin isn’t a good instrument. It is. It obviously has a place in an orchestra. It’s beautiful in a string quartet. It can play raucus bluegrass.

But my point is that while it has its place, that place is not in a trio, or a quartet or any other scenario where it leads a form that swings. Instead, it works where the music is straigh-ahead no matter the time signature or tonal dissonance.

I’m not sure why this is. A violinist can make beautiful runs, can get behind and ahead of the beat, can do all the other things that single note instruments like trumpets and saxes can do, but it ends up sounding flaccid in a Jazz setting.

This might be a string instrument thing. Few guitarists outside of Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt and Wes Montgomery have really left their mark. Sure, you can point to people like John McLaughlin but I’d argue that his improvisational innovations and excellence fall outside of Jazz. And when I say ‘fall outside of Jazz,’ I’m simply alluding to the fact that while Jazz is improvisational, not all improvisational music is what we typically think of when we think of Jazz.

(I recognize that’s a giant soggy towel of a statement, and I’m going to sidestep it and let it hang out there to dry since if you want in on a dirty little secret, I’d argue that all improvisational music is Jazz, that Jazz precisely means improvisation and that it further means dialog amongst many members who navigate their own voices as they come together in a collective give and take conversation.

(What I’m saying here though, is that despite the very large and significant exception I just outlined, when we discuss traditional Jazz forms, the violin just doesn’t cut it… and don’t even get me started on the flute.

(Thus ends my giant hedge.)

It might be a timbre thing, because when I mention strings I’m exluding bass. Charles Mingus, Ron Carter, Eddie Gomez, Dave Holland and so many others that have had us bob and weave our heads. Nuff said.

This might be more on point because as I think about it, and all apologies to Benny Goodman, but the clarinet doesn’t grab the gut either. It’s too thin. Too reedy.

I won’t mention the violinist by name because golden rules say that if I don’t have nice things to say, I shouldn’t. Besides, when she came onstage I recognized her. I’d seen her play before in an Americana roots band and her playing in that context was lovely and admirable.

Her pianist is impressive. His name is Jason Moran and his style ebbs, flows and splashes with short phrases and lines. He then stomps, rags and strides before emerging with tonal sheets laid atop one another like McCoy Tyner’s done throughout the years.

What’s important though is construction, of creating wholes out of disparate parts, and of understanding the parts or ingredients used to construct and create the whole. What’s important is choosing the parts that come together to form the whole. This is true be it music, visual art or software.

Software? Yes.

It’s a creative art that comes together to create a platform or environment on and within which users (i.e., audiences) interact.

I choose software deliberately. It’s a provocative art and our code slingers are poets to the highest degree.

They write a syntactic language, they abide by, break and create new rules, they alter and modify, they edit and purify, they create the altogether new, they open up unique possibilities of understanding and interacting with the world with their discoveries.

It’s a shame that most don’t see the craft behind programs but only the programs themselves. This would be like not being able to see Goya’s brush stroke, hear Hendrix’s guitar riff or watch Almodavar’s video frames pass by.

Artistry is hidden in software. Even more, the poetry of code has two distinct anamolies working for and against it.

• It’s obscured, meaning few see it. Possibly only other coders on a team in closed systems. More, obviously, in open source systems.

• It’s foundational, meaning that while code is poetry with its own logic and syntax, it also serves as a basis upon which others create objects that are totally unrelated in language if not necessarily in purpose.

For example, the code of Final Cut Pro allows for a music video. The code of Photoshop allows for an image. The code of Abelton Live allows for music. The video, the image, the music are all creations on top of creations and highly significant in that they could not exist if the orginal wasn’t birthed into place by poets slinging, then refining code.

Let’s add this to the mix: Code as collaborative art. Code as Jazz. Developers as a band that brings their unique take together to create a whole.

The reason I suggest this is because the art of software necessitates not just layers, but the interplay of layers. That interplay is an interlocking of back-end and front-end and all possible layers in between.

There’s someone who’s tuned a database and someone who’s written code to get and put information from and into that database.

Then there’s what we interact with. What we “see.” This is user interface. It’s the pretty design colors and buttons we press and how forms act and react to our choices and interaction.

Taken all together is an orchestrated piece, a program. And taken together it’s code as Jazz. It’s a navigated dialogue between the front-end and back-end.

Keeping things simple, the back-end and database is our rhythm section. Our drum and bass. It needs to be tight, it needs to be fluid and can’t falter or fall apart.

Graphics and general user interface — our front-end — are our soloists. The work together to create melody and harmony. They work with the rhythm section to create a composition.

Which brings me back to the violin. As said, it’s a very good instrument but has its place. So too in the Jazz of code.

Just because techniques, languages and other whizbangery can be done doesn’t mean it should be.

For the past few weeks we’ve read about the solution to some math thing with a French name that we don’t really get.

The Poincaré is a topographical conundrum that deals with measuring three-dimensional spheres. So perplexing was the riddle that the Clay Mathematics Institute selected it as one of seven Millenium Prize Problems and offered a million dollars to whoever could solve it.

Enter Grigory Perelman, a Russian mathematician variously described as reclusive and/or enigmatic. After posting a number of papers online and having them vetted by his peers, it appears he’s solved the Poincaré.

As Dennis Overbye wrote in The New York Times:

Now [mathematicians] say they have finished [reviewing] his work, and the evidence is circulating among scholars in the form of three book-length papers with about 1,000 pages of dense mathematics and prose between them.

As a result, there is a growing feeling, a cautious optimism that they have finally achieved a landmark not just of mathematics, but of human thought.

“It’s really a great moment in mathematics,” said Bruce Kleiner of Yale University, who has spent the last three years helping to explicate Perelman’s work. “It could have happened 100 years from now, or never.”

As a result of his achievement, the International Math Union awarded Perelman mathematics’ highest honor, the Fields Medal, and invited him to its quadrennial congress to receive it. Perelman refused the medal and declined to make an appearance.

And this is what gave the story legs. Add Perelman’s reclusive refusal to articulate why he’s declining the award and we have ourselves a media mini-event. Add a dash of eccentricity — he has really long fingernails— and the story has legs. Not quite John Mark Karr legs but legs nonetheless. You simply don’t turn down the Fields Medal. It’s like turning down the Nobel Prize — which Le Duc Tho did in protest during the Vietnam War and Jean-Paul Sartre did just because — and leads to a lot of head scratching and introspection. What’s gone unwritten and mostly unnoticed are a few words that usually appear with most of the stories: Perelman posted his Poincaré proofs on the Internet.

This makes it sound like he took out a MySpace account or some such haphazard thing. While that would be nice what he actually posted it to arXiv, an open resource run by the Cornell University Library with funding from the university and the National Science Foundation. It contains some 380 thousand science papers that anyone can view and review. This is precisely what some of math’s leading minds did when Perelman alerted them that the first of his three papers was on the server.

This, of course, is untraditional. Academics and scientists submit to peer-reviewed journals. Publication gives them the ever important stamp of legitimacy. Just ask Hwang Woo-Suk. The disgraced South Korean stem cell scientist is in the middle of a court battle fighting fraud charges that could lead to a ten-year prison sentence.

Since Perelman didn’t publish in a traditional, peer-reviewed journal, others such as Shing-Tung Yau could (the one he edits, actually) and attempt to lay claim to solving the Poincaré. You can catch up on a whole cast of characters with reputations to maintain and build if you read Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber’s Perelman profile in this week’s New Yorker (August 28, 2006).

There’s no small irony in the Web/ journal divide. All these Webs got their start as a way for academics to share information and collaborate. That’s all old news.

What’s new news, and what’s missing from the words so far spilled in the traditional press, is the significance that most mathematicians are having none of Shing-Tung Yau’s claim on the Poincaré.

They may find Perelman a little odd — and may be perplexed that he hasn’t sought the imprimatur of an established journal given the significance of his achievement — but the peer review enabled by an open source like arXiv carries enough significance that they credit him with the Poincaré solution.

And while the length of Perelman’s nails and his joy for long walks are all important humanizing details in the Poincaré-IMU congress story line, it’s the way Perelman put his intellectual capital out there, how he delivered his content, openly and freely that will be this story’s lasting legacy.

The story of open source software has been told. It’s lead to tremendous applications and solutions.

The story of content put in the public domain, either freely or under licenses such Creative Commons is a sleeper. But a sleeper with incredible cultural ramifications.

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the authorities in the UK have stopped a massive terror plot to bring down 20 planes in the USA using liquid explosives in carry-on bags.

For the first time, we’re at “red alert” for a part of the country, specifically, places where planes from the UK are coming into the USA.

At 5:15 this morning, I listened to the CEO of Heathrow Airport describe the security measures they have undertaken. Read this closely, because this will become the norm for air travel in the very near future.

1. No more carry-on luggage. No computer bags, backpacks, waist packs, whatever. None.

2. No liquids, lotions, creams or other liquid-like substances. Exceptions are baby milk (which you must drink to prove it’s not toxic – a pointless exercise for a suicide bomber) and medications.

3. No electronics of any kind. No iPod, FLASHLIGHTS, Cell Phone, Key Fob Car Unlocker, Laptops, hip tops, nothing that uses electricity or has a battery. No radios of ANY KIND.

4. Allowed items are travel documents, identity papers, money, cards, medications (with prescriptions), sanitary items. All items must be carried in a clear plastic bag. All passengers are hand-searched. All shoes, belts, clothing accessories and so forth are x-rayed and hand examined.

5. Only airport-provided wheelchairs may be used.

Obviously, the next logical step is that you must fly naked & sedated, which would be fine with me. Or perhaps it’s time to get serious with this idea: http://www.focazio.com/pa/

In all seriousness, this raises some profound implications for traveling. Of course, my first bit of advice is, as always; don’t check what you can send. Pack it in a sturdy case, call UPS or Fedex, and ship it to your destination. It’s not as expensive as you’d think.

That said, now that you need to (gasp!) check your laptop, it’s time to talk about the reality of doing it right.

First of all, physical protection. There’s only one way to go when packing a laptop, and that’s the case-in-a-case method. My favorite laptop case is the Pelican 1490CC1. There’s also a 1490CC2, which is about $20 less, but lacks the storage space of the 1490CC1. They are about $149 (for the CC1) and $129 (for the CC2). Pack that case INSIDE another case (like another Pelican Case ideally, or another HARD-SIDE case.

You can’t lock your bags, unless you’re checking a gun, and the TSA-approved locks are a joke, so don’t bother with locks. So another thing you should do is protect your data.

The most basic thing you can do to protect a laptop is to enable a power-on password via the system BIOS. While this won’t stop someone from getting at the data on your hard drive if they remove the drive from your computer, it will stop the less-determined. The next level is to disable auto-login on your computer. Yes, it’s a pain in the butt to have to log-in to the system, but it’s another level of prevention. Before you fly, clear out all of your saved passwords, cookies and delete your temporary files. I use a product called BC Wipe (google it) to make sure files that I delete are really gone.

Finally, and this is a it of a radical step, consider encrypting your hard drive. On a Mac, this is as simple as using the “File Vault” option under the “Security” system preferences. This takes your entire home directory and makes it an encrypted data store. That means that without your password, the data on the file can’t be read, even if the hard drive is physically removed. On a PC, things are not as simple, but check out the software that came with the laptop – for example, the Acer TravelMate series includes a fairly decent encryption utility that comes pre-installed on the system.

The other option is to skip the laptop entirely and move your digital life onto a USB Keychain Drive. It’s amazing how effective this is. If you go to www.portableapps.com, you’ll find a universe of applications that you can copy to a USB Keychain Drive. I carry a Lexar Media 2GB Jump Drive Lightning, and on it I have portable versions of the Firefox web browser, Thunderbird Email, Open Office – an MS-Office Replacement, Filezilla FTP client, Clam Window Virus Scanner, GAIM, a multi-platform instant messaging client, NVU - a web page & site creation tool similar to FrontPage, GIMP, a photoshop replacement, and VLC, a media player application for video and audio. I fit all that in 747 MB, and that leaves me with lots of room to spare for files. All I need is a Windows computer with a USB port and I’m up and running. The nice thing about this is with a 2GB USB Drive, I can back up everything – applications and files – in a few minutes to a DVD (which holds 4.7 GB). Heck, 2GB is small enough that you can zip the entire drive and upload it to a web server somewhere as a backup. If I really, really really wanted to travel light, I could even forego the USB key drive and put all the applications and data onto a single 2gb SD card (http://usamemory.net/2gbsdcard.html) and tuck that into my wallet. It’s easy to find card readers anywhere you go.

In the end, air travel, which I remember as being glamorous and exciting when I was a kid, has gradually gone from being something desirable to being only slightly more pleasant than crawling on your hands and knees through a sewer while being yelled at by angry trolls who are throwing rotten tomatoes at your head.

Getting there is none of the fun, that’s for sure.

Two great sucking sounds are going on around me: one, I’m hogging/floading/abusing ScribeStudio bandwidth by uploading masses of audio and video files to the RailsConf 2006 On-Demand Web Site.

It’s gigs going back and forth between our post-production servers and the ScribeStudio servers that deliver the RailsConf site.

Then there are some gigs going back and forth between an audio editor who chops up audio so it fits neat and clean into a multiclip player like this:

And finally there are outgoing gigs for those who’ve already subscribed to the site and gotten hold of the Podcast RSS.

Great sucking sound part two: my head. I alluded to this the other day when I wrote about Flash, Flex and ActionScript 3.0. Basically, I get so knee deep in that which we’re doing that my mind turns off to things that are going on around me.

For example, I met with folk at a museum here in New York yesterday to discuss working together. The Program Director walked me through galleries as he talked about things they’re working on and how if we could feed our ScribeLIVE! Web conferencing into their speaker series, they could have panelists around the world participate in discussions without having to fly them in and put them up in hotels.

Of course we can do that. That’s all very easy. But as I stared at paintings by John Lurie I thought to myself, well, wow, there’s a world of stuff going on out here.

I forget about that sometimes, and of all the things that I don’t want to forget, the fact that there’s a world of things going on tops the list.

It’s a mind game. Rest generally recharges the batteries but there’s so little time to take typical rest. But rest comes in different forms and one of the RailsConf speakers (Nathaniel Talbott, maybe? Hard to remember anymore as it’s all become a blur) nailed the concept of rest well on the head.

Rest isn’t sloth. It isn’t necessarily sitting on a couch with the remote in one hand and a pint of Chunky Monkey in the other.

Instead, rest is a moving of the mind and body. Of focussing the mind and body on something different than the everyday. It can be riding a bike. It can be reading a book. It can be seeing a movie. It can be going to a museum.

For me it’s increasingly playing music. I used to do this a lot, with fairly regular gigs at the Knitting Factory. I stopped all that a few years ago but now I’m back into it and even brought my guitar to the Studio today so I can noodle tonight when everyone goes home.

Actually, I’m playing with a crazy Frenchman and we’re working on music to put glide in people’s stride. Haven’t played guitar in ages although it’s one of the things I used to do very well. I switched to electronic noodling a while back. Choice of tools is Propellerheads’ Reason and Digidesign’s Pro-Tools. If you happen to subscribe to the RailsConf 2006 Keynote Series Podcast you’ll hear me and my notemaking at the beginningo each episode.

Anyway, it’s Thursday. I’m a bit pooped so I’ll play some music. If it’s still hot and steamy this weekend, I’ll go to the beach and swim as far as my haggard body will take me. And hopefully, by next week, the great sucking sounds around me will have dissipated.

michael was editing some religious sessions we webcast recently and we got to talking religion. we were talking about the major religions and the myriad sects, spin-offs and other off-shoots that have sprung from them, as well some of god’s more recent triumphs such as scientology.

i’m generally a big fan of religion as an idea. the concepts in pretty much every religion are the same and universal – be a good person, etc. i’m less a fan of the people who actually implement those ideas as the custodians of a faith and the shephards of those who believe in that faith. there are some scary people interpreting the words of god these days in the name of religion. and, more to the point, when was the last time that religion prevented a war, rather than started a war? as in “religious group 1 and religious group 2 were about to start killing each other but then the leaders of the two groups called on their faith and were told by god to not kill each other. thus, war was averted.”

my specific quest last night was to discover the roots of the hasidic wardrobe. specifically, with over 2,000 years of wardrobe styles to choose from, why did they settle on the mid-1800s black suite instead of, say, the more comfortable and stylish roman-era robe? this lead me to a wardrobe comparison with the equally stylish Amish, so effectively portrayed by Jeff Daniels in Kingpins.

so i decided to take a page out of bobby flay’s book. i watch a lot of food network because, well, i don’t get many other stations. he has a show called throwdown where he competes head to head with wannabe chefs in their specialty. for example, if i hyped myself up as the best tiramisu maker this side of the atlantic, he would show up at my house, cameras rolling, and challenge me to a tiramisu bake-off. a judge would choose a winner. if anyone is wondering, i would win.

so in this episode of Religious Throwdown, i’m putting christians against jews….amish against hasidic….lancaster pennsylvania v. brooklyn, new york. it’s a battle of style, of sassiness, of funky yet functional modern attire.

a quick trip to wikipedia brought me up to speed on these two wiley groups. first up, the amish and some tidbits from the wiki masters. i learned that the amish separate into new sects more frequently than amoeba.

Groups may separate over matters such as the width of a hat-brim, the use of tobacco (permitted among older and more conservative groups), the color of buggies, or various other issues.

i’ve been to church a few times in my life. usually not the most exciting time, but imagine sitting through this:

The service is interspersed with hymns, sung without instrumental accompaniment or harmony. Singing is usually very slow, and a single hymn may take 15 minutes to finish.

tone-deaf white people singing uninspiring songs…the extended remix version.

conservative fellowships may disagree over the number of suspenders males should wear (only one is needed, so two could be seen as vanity)

evidently, my mother harping over my 5pm shadow is trivial compared to the family debates brewing in the amish community and the lectures amish children probably have to endure from their parents.

of course, the Amish are most known for their lack of modern amenities.

Electricity, for instance, is viewed as a connection to the “World”, the “English”, or “Yankees” (the outside world). The use of electricity also could lead to the use of household appliances that would complicate the Amish tradition of a simple life, and introduce individualist competition for worldly goods that would be destructive of community.

so that’s about all i know about the Amish. now let’s move to the streets of brooklyn. in this corner, with a history of 300 years, weighing in @ a few million strong, the Hasidic Jew. insert crowd cheering noise here…

what would new york be without the friendly smile that greets a goyim every time i walk into a hasidic store on orchard street. not my new york, i say. the hasidics started pretty strong in their wikipedia description:

Hasidic Judaism originated in a time (mid 1700s) of persecution of the Jewish people, when European Jews had turned inward to Talmud study; many felt that most expressions of Jewish life had become too “academic”, and that they no longer had any emphasis on spirituality or joy.

any religion that gets its start because its founders don’t think other people are having enough fun is alright by me. but this got me thinking, i don’t think i’ve seen a generally less happy group of people than hasidics in NYC. so what happened between those ambitious party people Studio 54 beginnings and, well, today?!

early Hasidism aimed not at dogmatic or ritual reform, but at a deeper psychological one. It aimed to change not the belief, but the believer. By means of psychological suggestion it created a new type of religious man, a type that placed emotion above reason and rites, and religious exaltation above knowledge.

so far so good…

Devekut (communion) refers to the belief that an unbroken intercourse takes place between the world of God and the world of humanity. It is true not only that the Deity influences the acts of man, but also that man exerts an influence on the will of the Deity. Every act and word of man produces a corresponding vibration in the upper spheres. From this conception is derived the chief practical principle of Hasidism – communion with God for the purpose of uniting with the source of life and of influencing it. This communion is achieved through the concentration of all thoughts on God, and consulting Him in all the affairs of life.

The righteous man is in constant communion with God, even in his worldly affairs, since here also he feels His presence. An especial form of communion with God is prayer. In order to render this communion complete the prayer must be full of fervor, ecstatic; and the soul of him who prays must during his devotions detach itself, so to speak, from its material dwelling. For the attainment of ecstasy recourse may be had to mechanical means, to violent bodily motions, to shouting and singing. According to Besht, the essence of religion is in sentiment and not in reason. Theological learning and halakhic lore are of secondary importance, and are useful only when they serve as a means of producing an exalted religious mood.

these guys rock.

many pious Hasidic couples follow strict regulations regarding what types of sexual relations are allowed and how (what positions etc.). Hassidic thought stresses the holiness of sex. Most Hasidic sects stress the importance of married couples enjoying the pleasure of sexual intercourse as a divine command.

did i mention that these guys rock?!

the final judgement:

• Amish speak Deitsch. Hasidics speak Yiddish. (advantage Amish)
• Amish roll in horse and carriage. Hasidics roll on the subway. (advantage Amish)
• Amish wear white shirts, black vests and black pants. Hasidics wear white shirt, black jackets and black pants. (tie)
• Amish wear black hats. Hasidics wear black hats with the urban youth influenced skull cap underneath. (advantage Hasidics – extra points for the urban influence)
• Amish music has no harmony and no instruments. Hasidic music is some crazy wacked out gypsy influenced s$*t. (advantage Hasidics)
• Amish teens get to leave the farm and seek debauchery for a few years before returning to the flock. Hasidics have the inside track on the brooklyn prostitute scene. (short term advantage Amish, long term advantage Hasidics)
• Amish don’t have to go to school past the 8th grade. Hasidics read the same book, a lot (tie)
• Amish sex ( i just wanted to say “Amish sex”). Hasidics believe sex should be enjoyed. (advantage Hasidics)

stay tuned for upcoming episodes:

• Al Sharpton v. Jerry Falwell
• Rastafari v. All comers
• Shaolin Monks v. Patriot Priests
• Sunni v. Shi’ite (can’t we all just hold hands and make up?)

A bird turd fell from the sky the other day and splattered against the left lens of my eyeglasses.

Serious.

I don’t make light of such things. I got out of the subway, was walking back to the cave and flwip, a chunk of gunk smeared across my lens.

Color me lucky, although I have no idea how, where or why being crapped on was ever considered lucky.

Since the turd was blocking my vision, I removed my glasses.

This blinded me a little. I can only sorta kind of see without them. Which brings me back to what this is all about. And for those of you keeping track, this paragraph is a segue.

Adobe released Flash Player 9 two weeks ago and with it, developers started coding in ActionScript 3.0. ActionScript 3.0 expands on the core object-oriented programming syntax of ActionScript 2.0, but its real improvement comes in the changes made to the built-in Flash Player API.

I won’t try to go into it here, or anywhere for that matter since for me to explain it would be making a mockery of people who can explain it well, like say, Colin Moock who’s been writing the O’Reilly ActionScript books the past couple of years.

What I will get into though is that like my turd covered lenses and my partial blindness, I haven’t seen, or quite looked out at what’s going on in the Flash development world.

We use Flash here and there, and have used it with great success for our multiclip video players and Web Conferencing/Web TV platforms. (And I say “great success” so long as it’s out of earshot of the disgruntled Rails developers who’ve been harping on our multiclip video players and screaming bloody murder for video to be played in QuickTime).

What we haven’t done though is build Flash apps and if you asked me a few years ago, and especially before Web 2 Point D’oh, I’d have said that the next stage of Internet development was going to be rich Flash apps.

Some have been built, and OpenLaszlo and the good folk behind it at Laszlo Systems have some exceptional interface and applications going on.

But something funny happened on the way to the coliseum and that something was this thing called AJAX . And while AJAX isn’t a Flash killer it has changed the rules of the game, or if it didn’t change the rules of the game it definitely moved the goalposts.

For example, I’ve been dwelling on participatory content, and by participatory content I don’t mean the rise of user generated content.

What I mean is content you can interact with, content that you can tag, annotate and discuss with others as you tag and annotate. This is symmetrical, synchronous interactions with anyone, anywhere who’s looking at the same content object that you are (say, a video), and not asynchronous commenting like you see here on this and other blogs or message boards.

So that’s where my head’s been at. And because that’s where my head’s been at, and because Flash is not the tool to create the whole of that experience, I’ve been blind to what’s been going on in that community save for keeping tabs on FlashComm/Flash Media Server and letting a schadenfreudal smirk pass my lips when Adobe bought Macromedia and cannabalized a number of redundant product lines.

Anyway: Cheers to the release and cheers to the those who are working their way through ActionScript 3.0. I’m looking forward to your continued contributions to the Web app world.

We had the good fortune of being invited by the South Asian Journalists Association to come up to Columbia University and film Brian Williams’ keynote address to their annual convention.

He spoke about his lifelong journey to the network chair, how the news is covered and whether the iPod is leading us back to a concept called broadcast TV. Actually, he made a lot of fun of the digital world, and that fun is funny even if I beg to differ.

As usual, the video below requires Flash Player 8 which you can download here.

Brian’s blog is called the Daily Nightly.

Below are highlights from his biography, his full biography can be read by following this link.

Brian Williams became the seventh anchor and managing editor in the distinguished history of “NBC Nightly News” on December 2, 2004. Now, more than a year-and-a-half at the helm of “Nightly News,” Williams is the nation’s most-watched news anchor. His nightly broadcast represents the largest single daily source of news in America. In June, the four-time Emmy winner received television’s highest honor, the George Foster Peabody Award, for his coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath…

...Since joining NBC News in 1993, Williams has become one of the nation’s foremost television journalists, covering virtually every major breaking news event and traveling extensively around the world. He is a veteran of political campaigns and elections, the Middle East, and has traveled to dozens of U.S. cities and foreign countries in the course of covering the news over more than two decades.