The moment I look up…

When we look to the sky, or wherever we look for guidance, often times we can’t see what we’re looking for because there is so much in the way to distract us, discourage us. If we look hard enough we can still see where we need to go to find where we need to be, but the inauspicious path encourages us to waver. What works for me is to look at those snags and find the beauty they provide.

This is where the Serenity Prayer becomes useful in our lives. There are a few versions of the prayer and even more applications of it. The bit I find the most edifying is the bit about asking for wisdom–finding the wisdom to know what is right. Of all the prayers I offer, there is always this request to those that I care about.

Grant to us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed, courage to change that which can be changed, and wisdom to know the one from the other…

This post serves as an ever changing brain dump of thoughts and opinions about the question, “Is Flash Section 508 compliant?” (Consider this a rough draft.)

Flash Web content and Flash Web applications are inherently neither Section 508 compliant nor accessible.

That being said, Flash is multimedia. It must therefore, irrespective of the context or the audience for which the Flash is intended, still meet certain criterion, the least of which is to provide textual equivalents to all Flash content, irregardless of implementation and purpose, to be Section 508 compliant.

To be exact, it must meet Section 508 §1194.21, as well as Section 508 §1194.22 and Section 508 §1194.31. For example, the controls of Flash objects must behave like all Web content. It must be executable from a keyboard, must provide a well-defined on-screen indication of the current focus, and each control of the flash content must provide sufficient information about its identity, operation, and state to assistive technology.

This does not pertain to just blind users and screen reading software. User input can not be relied upon to always be coming from a mouse type input device. A professional Web developer must always test their products with alternative input devices available, e.g. a common keyboard. That notwithstanding, in developing accessible flash, the development team may want to consider the Accessibility.isActive() function in ActionScript to detect for screen readers and provide additional buttons or turn on self-voicing features if this is within the scope of the project.

Nonetheless, my fundamental and recurring question is “Why Flash?” In the professional Web community it is the popular opinion that the only thing that Flash is good for is delivering video and audio. Anything and everything else can be built with properly written and unobtrusive JavaScript to obtain “flashy” looking sites and applications. When Web applications and sites are built with this in mind, there is no need to expend additional effort and resources on compliant alternatives.

Chefchaouen, The blue beauty, courtesy of Pejman Parvandi and Creative Commons.

Twelve years ago, my Easter was spent with some wonderful friends in Sevilla, Spain and Chefchaouen, Morocco. It was a wonderful way to spend Semana Santa. I was a very passionate adventure, but by far the most passionate was the time spent in Chefchaouen.

What I remember from that time is buried somewhere in 35mm negative film and the following bit of text that I wrote soon after that trip. But without these words or those photos I still remember what I learned from that trip: Looking into another’s eyes.

Morocco, or Marruecos or Le Maroc, is a dry, mountainous region with spots of green trees and grass. After it rains it is perhaps greener than anywhere on earth. It is largely an agrarian society whereby it depends on the earth for its economic welfare. It is a third world country, an “undeveloped” country, by standards of “The West”. However, the people of Morocco are in no hurry to develop. They keep their old ways of building houses and buildings. They may put a few antennas and satellite dishes on top; but for example, in the town where I was for most of my time, Chefchaouen or Xaouen, they still paint the buildings white and the porticos, doors, and windows a light pale blue. The blue color keeps flies and insects away. It’s sort of a natural repellent.

Anyway, I spent a week in this town and as for getting to know the folks, they are quite pleasant. In Chefchaouen, they are not as pushy as the bigger cities. If you don’t give money freely they will still talk with you and get to know you. If they help you it is a nice thing though to give them some money. It all depends on how they help you.

But in all the people are beautiful, with beautiful eyes–the women exceptionally so. The women don’t freely talk to foreign men. It may have something to do with the religion and culture. But what one can do is make eye contact, and this I learned was better than words.

Eye contact in Morroco is very important, more so than in Spain, where facial expressions are the fashion. In Morocco, it’s the way of life. One can truly feel how they live by looking in their eyes. I suppose you can do that anywhere in the world, but, for example in the United States, there is too much dependence on words and then we lose touch with ourselves and others. This may be a bit deep but it is what I think.

In the end I highly recommend a visit and I highly recommend working on the eye contact thing.

The best things in life are not free, but worth the wait.

They say that good things come to those who wait. I disagree, because the good things are always taken by the impatient and more aggressive machiavellian types in our societies.

One believes more that, the best things come to those who wait.

Talk amongst yourselves as to the truthfullness of this.

I really don’t like the idea of finding deep thoughts on the side of a Starbucks coffee cup, but this one just jumped at me from Hala Moddelmog:

There is a subtle difference between a mission and a promise. A mission is something you strive to accomplish–a promise is something you are compelled to keep. One is individual, the other is shared. When a mission and a promise are one and the same…that’s when mountains are moved and races are won.

How often in life are such things truly shared?

Christian Heilmann tweeted about Dinner etiquette for the advanced users and after reading, I felt it important to offer a text version of the graphic found at the end of the link trail.

Should a guest die during the party, you should, of course, continue in the next room, leaving the deceased at the table, in peace, to be collected later. If he/she hasn’t started a particular course, it is fair to arrange for the extra portion to be divided up amongst the remainder of the guests. Naturally, if the deceased’s head has fallen on to the dish, it would be bad manners to move the body just to reach the uneaten food (unless, of course, it is a particularly good dish). If there is no alternative room to remove to, then the deceased may be covered up with a suitable cloth or coat, and conversation may be continued. However, although it’s ok to talk over the body, it would be bad manners to talk about the person.

Bon appétit!

The texture & melody the Strawberry knows is that of love & gratitude.

The point of my previous prattle was that I’m very thankful for where I am in life and for those who’ve been there for me along the way. In a hard core world, it’s good to know where one’s heart is.

And, that’s all I’m going to say about that, for now.

Amang the train, there is a swain

I dearly lo’e mysel’

What am I doing on this train? This train is great. It’s winter and spring is coming. This train takes me from where I live to where I work. It takes me away from one place to another and back again. I can’t wait each day to see what will be new at each stop.

The places are the same, but the times are different. It really is amazing how the places change from time to time. You may say that they are the same, that it’s a place you can always come back to, and it’s still as you remember it–but, it’s not.

It’s different. It’s new and not the same. It’s a new time. It really is amazing each new moment in time.

If you are listening to the Red Priest, Antonio Vivaldi, you might be hearing his Four Seasons. A collection of pieces of music that changes from beginning to end. It represents places in time, the year. They say he had a feeling for melody and texture in his music. I say he had a penchant for recognizing that every year we have a group of constant reminders that times are a-changing.

The year is always there. It’s something you can count on. The people and events of each year come and go, but rest assured the year will always be there. And with each year, one can count on the seasons of the year as one’s perennial visitor, a pilgrim, if you will, on a mission to remind us that change is coming. We are rest assured with the changing seasons that things are and time is new, different, changing to a new moment in our lives that has never been.

Yes, another year, another day, in the same place, but what makes this day, this moment in this same place so unique and amazing is that it has never been here before. This is what all the crazy people are saying. They’ve been saying it long before Lucio wrote its soundtrack. Every moment in time is a juncture that we have choose to refashion our world or stay the same and do nothing at all. If we listen to the anthem of the train, the chorus of our providence, we will see that every new moment is a moment for us to behold, grow, love, change, fail, and triumph.

What am I doing on this train? The train is coming to the last stop of the day. It’s not the last stop in this life. It’s another moment in time for me to feel the texture of love and to be dazzled by you, life.

As I sit in a waiting room waiting for my child to go into play therapy, I see the few other children waiting in this waiting room. They are all here waiting with us, their parents, in this waiting room to wait and play. When the waiting is over, the children will go in and play with one another while the parents wait for the hour to pass. We wait not for the hour to pass alone, we wait to have our children back next to us. We also wait for the play therapy to work its magic on our children.

It’s nice to see our children play with other children who want to play with them in return. We know more than any other parent that our child is normal, yet we are accustomed to making excuses we forget where we are. The children understand one another quite well. I know this because we as adults understand the other adults quite well. We can tell which one of us we will get along with and which one we won’t. Our children don’t really care about that, do they?

I look at the children waiting to play. It’s how they wait for us to stop waiting on them to grow up.

2006 Santa Cruz Chameleon Hardtail Mountain Bike Frame

I’ve been carrying this frame around hoping to build it up into a single speed. I’m going to hold off for now and try to find this sweet frame a good home.

This frame was ordered from the factory 3 years ago and never been used or built. It’s just been sitting on my shelf. Some of the decals are a bit scuffed from coming too close to other stuff, but the frame is still in perfect shape.

• Size: Medium
• Color: Grey

Here’s a blurb from the catalog in 2006:

Like the name implies, a versatile bike. Or a lizard that can change colors. It looks more like a bike than a lizard though. Anyway, the Chameleon is a stiff and tough 7005 aluminum bike. It’s built with a pair of rocket fast 1 inch square chainstays, wishbone seatstay, gusseted top and down tubes, horizontal dropouts, and snappy geometry. We designed the chameleon to be a fast handling, fun to ride bike that should last a long time even under the hands of abusive psychopaths. Slalom? Why, yes. X-C? Of course. Single speed? Certainly, you sick pervert. The name is Chameleon, after all.. Frame weighs 4.1lbs

Update: SOLD!

I enjoy language, as one can read from my previous Hungarian language post.

English is my first language, yet only recently have I’ve learned that there is more than one English language. My ignorance led me to believe that there was only a difference in accents and verbage, however living out of my own country for the last ten years has taught me that there are vast differences.

Joe Clark now spells out this difference in his new E-book, an electronic book you can read in a Web browser or print, Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours.

Canadian spelling is tricky and easy to get wrong. But the book reveals the results of new, original research – into everything from newspaper articles to court rulings to literature to blogs – that Canadian spelling is well accepted, well practised (not “practiced”), and stable. Except there’s one little fly in the ointment: Your spellchecker will steer you wrong every time unless you already know all the rules by heart. After you read the book, you will know those rules.

Check out Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours and learn for yourself so you don’t have to be as ignoramus as I be. :p

I’m just writing this to fill the 1.5 hours left in the flight after my two movies ended to vent, if you will.

The Hungarian language is a beautiful language. It’s a language all on its own without much relation to any other language out there known to a similar group of 14.5 million people. After listening to the language for some time, one eventually starts to discern certain words. But that’s not the point of this part of the story. The point is, that it is harmonic and delightful to listen to the way these sounds come out of the mouth of mature humans, of which more than 14.5 million people, mature and otherwise, understand. It truly is amazing the way the grown human palate can produce such vocabulary with a grammar richer in structure and with an alphabet more robust than my own English, with the rises, falls, and pitches constructing the linguistic intonations.

Do not mistake this homily as a diatribe against the Hungarian language or culture. I may be colourful with this expounding, but I do truly enjoy listening to the language being spoken. When I lived in Croatia, Hungary’s southern neighbour, before I made an effort to learn the Croatian language, I’d listen to Hungarian radio stations. The reason for this is simple. Radio stations are the same the world over–a little bit of music and a whole bunch of talk. If you’re given the choice to listen to two radio stations, each talking endlessly about very important matters and trivial issues, in a different language that has no relationship to any other language that you know, and you must listen through the talking to get to the music, which one would you choose? Irregardless of which you’d choose, I chose the language that was more pleasant on the ear.

This all changes when old ladies enter the picture, or shall we say “sound stage”. They enter stage left behind me on a 9 hour transatlantic flight in coach flying from Budapest to New York. Old ladies talking is just fine. Really. People talking is just fine, too. Look at us. We all talk. Ladies, young and old, have been talking for time eternal. Some of the smartest people have been some of them old ladies talking to other old ladies. Honestly. Some of my favourite relatives are old ladies. And, they talk. That’s just fine. Heck, I’ve known men, old and young, who talk just as much if not more than your average old talking lady.

The real point is that old ladies talking is great and all, but when they’re speaking Hungarian the entire time, hacking and sneezing up a lung or two, sitting behind me on a 9 hour flight across the atlantic, and constantly pushing and pulling my seat and using it as an assistive device to enable them in and out of their seats each time they have to go to the potty, stretch their legs, or get something out of their luggage in the overhead compartment during the movie and stand in between me and the movie screen of a movie that I’ve never had the chance to watch but always wanted to watch and now that I’m on this nine hour flight over the atlantic, gosh, it’d sure be nice to watch, it gets a bit bothersome.

Honestly, it could’ve been any language and anyone.

Originally written on 17 June 1996

I had a dream with my father in it. He was young. My age and he was very handsome. We seem to get along quite well. I seem to have also been travelling with another buddy who appeared to be like Nick Nolte. We were flying in a plane and it would switch back and forth to a bus.

I couldn’t ever get comfortable in the plane/bus and was constantly annoying this woman who seemed to be one of those annoying type of girls from my childhood. Nick and I decided to get off the bus/plane early before it arrived at LAX.

We got off at Venice beach because Nick thought I might enjoy the break from it all and go play badminton or volleyball but I had to get back to the bus/plane because of my carry-on luggage and stuff I had strewn about the cabin.

At about that time a shoe came floating down the street and Nick asked if it was one of mine and I ran after it, picked it up and found out that it was not mine but it was a size 13. This old man asked to see it and I asked him if it was his because he had asked me the same question.

He said it was not but just wanted to see it never the less. I knew the airport was just down the road and we could walk if we wanted to but I found a tractor trailer truck to drive so I turned around to find Nick and we headed for the airport.

While Nick went for my carry-on luggage I went to the trailer to sleep. That is when I noticed that I was in the trailer that was behind my brown Ford truck and the engine was running and I was parked in a loading zone at the airport.

I was worried about being towed so I moved it to special parking for trucks with trailers that carried planes. Even though my truck was hauling a boat I parked there anyway. It was about this time that I noticed I was at my dads apartment because he lived just down the street from the airport. We were watching videos of some sort and I just look at him and noticed how young and healthy he was.

Today my son was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome.

My earliest memory is undefined as such. There is no one memory that sticks out from the rest. To me they are the pictures in the box in the attic of my relative’s houses. I look at them and understand what they are of and who is in the pictures. I don’t remember the time for the time itself.

I have always been by myself. Before my father and mother got a divorce they were always around. After the divorce my mother was around more than my father. That didn’t change the fact that I was always by myself.

The memories before the divorce are very few. The memories after are more concrete. I was nine at the time and in my own world. Puberty didn’t set in until very late and all the worry that goes with it never was my problems. I was in my own different world.

So when Proust remembers in Swann’s Way these memories to the nth detail I have to only believe him for I cannot relate to any of his emotions.

I remember images and places very vaguely. My nostalgia for certain places in time makes me now wish I had acted differently.

For instance, when I was thirteen, without a sign of pubic hair or cracking of the voice, I spent a hot summer on my grandfather’s dairy farm in southern Missouri. I have read many descriptions of what hot summers in the Midwest is supposed to entail for a young boy of such age as thirteen. I remember meeting the kids of the area and going exploring with them in the woods of the northern Ozarks. If I remember correctly there were about two boys, me making a third, and four girls. They were a collection of brothers, sisters and cousins. Some of them were my age and a few of them were either older or younger. I remember running around, exploring and going swimming with them. I don’t remember how I related to them or they to me. I just remember them being there.

Looking back this would have been a great time for me to become aware of my innocence and perhaps lose it. But I just kept swimming and running. To this date I do not know when it was that I lost my innocence. Am I still innocent? I can’t be. There must have been a time.

Throughout my growing up there has never been one person with whom I’ve emulated. When I find someone I respect I try and figure out what it is about that person that makes me respect them. I will look a this new found virtue and see if there is a way I can add this to my life. If there is I will do so. Likewise but vice versa will I do so if I meet someone with whom I cannot respect? I’ll look for that one aspect of them that makes me detest them so and then look to see if that is in my life and then remove it or change it. I do hope this makes sense.

I don’t remember his name but he was a few years older than me. He worked in this office that I was temping for. We would chat very socially at times and at times he would point out idiosyncrasies in my speech patterns. I enjoyed listening to him speak that I respected his awareness of my speech that I took to heart what he said and made changes in my speech patterns. To this day when I am conscious of my speaking I remember him.

I was only at the office for about four weeks. I have never seen him since. It is people like these that influence my life.

These days I’m always in the present rarely looking back, let alone looking forward, however for me that is a different story.

Do you know the quote about knowing history so you don’t repeat it? Well I agree with knowing of the past and remembering the past, yet repetition is not always so bad a thing. After all that’s what revolutions are all about.

This article was originally written in October 1997. I really liked it and always wanted to publish it. Ta-da!

Utopias have always been a favourite escape of mine. Whether it is in the future or in the past, from early childhood I have continually searched for a better world to live. Is this escapism? I have reservations about the negative meaning that the word “escapism” has in language. For a prisoner, to escape has always been a good thing and an individual escape can be a first necessary step toward a collective escape. In a sense this is Utopia.

The idea that the utopian element can be gone from contemporary anticipation is of mixed parties. Some may say that Utopia has no place in current political thought and theory, and there are others that would say Utopia belongs only within socialistic paradigms. I am of a different party: I believe the tool of Utopia is vital towards understanding and educating ourselves. I find its specific uses as a literary instrument perplexing and necessary; yet, there exists a trap that I believe many people fall into when reading utopic literature: they read it as a literally specific blueprint of a proposed societal structure and jump to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be feasible. “Prose is bad when people stop to look at it” (Lawrence 1940). When someone reads of a Utopia there seems to be some sense of them that believes they can take the Utopia with them as they close the book. While reading they may be taking part of the spirit of Utopia and even believe in it. But when they close the book and the Utopia doesn’t leave with them, they become disgruntled and disillusioned.

What writers write is either part of, or the whole of the writer; but there is another part that is not theirs. It belongs to the collective of their society. It is with the anonymous work of the milieu that spurs literature. No one is innocent. All we do and say is, and has, an underlying motive. To be aware of these motives is the essential element in beginning to get the better of them. What matters is the way in which we accept our motives and live through the ensuing crisis. This is the only chance we have of becoming different from the way we are — that is, the only way of starting to invent a new way of being.

“Society today demands that the writer raise his voice if he wants to be heard, propose ideas that will have impact on the public, push all his instinctive reactions to extremes. But even the most sensational and explosive statements pass over the heads of readers. All is as nothing, like the sound of the wind. Any comment appears no more than a shake of the head, as at a naughty boy, everyone knows that words are only words, and produce no friction with the world around us: they involve no danger either for the reader or the writer. In the ocean of words, printed or broadcast, the words of the poet or writer are swallowed up” (Calvino 96).

Utopia gives a voice to those aware that freedom implies a society on the move, in which a lot of things are changing (for better or worse;) in this case, too, what is in question is the relationship between the message of Utopia and society, or, between the message and the possible creation of a society to receive it. Utopia is one of society’s instruments of self-awareness —not the only one, but nonetheless an essential instrument, because its origins are connected with the origins of various types of human emotions.

“I should probably say first that the kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world” (Havel 22).

When in the course of human events there comes a point where the sacrifices of one outweigh that of another, there is injustice on a grand scale. Suffering is equal to despair and where there is despair there is hope. Hope is a human condition that leads to ambition The challenge is take these hopes and desires and transform them into vehicles that can transcend the blockades of our limits. When the blockades are structural constructs of political factions the soul can lose hope quickly. In writing his essay on Goethe’s Elective Affinities, Walter Benjamin revealed the purpose of hope: “It is for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us” (Quoted in Bronner 131).

Utopia is often cited as an impractical and useless way of thinking, however Utopia in the past has been favoured rather than the more practical forces that failed before them. The Reformation and the end of the French Revolutionary War are two examples of times past when Utopia sat upon fertile ground (Calvino 246). But what has become of Utopia now? Calvino believes that, “Utopia defies time by setting itself up in a no-place, rejecting relationships with the ‘other’ world…” (Calvino 247) This may be the case however it does not defy change or redefinition.

Murray Bookchin shouts out in The Ecology of Freedom, “The Republic is not a Utopia.” He is referring to Plato’s Republic. He believes that it does not fit with what his view of Utopia is: “a vision of a communist society, or in any sense of the term a democracy.” (Bookchin 1991) Had the word and concept of Utopia been coined before Sir Tomas Moore and during Socrates existence existed, I’m sure as well that Plato, through the tongue of Socrates, would stress that his society was indeed an ideal societal structure, yet not utopic. In order for this idea to stand, Utopia must be understood as a rational approach to formulating visions of understanding our potentiality. Rational versus realistic introduces the question, “What is realistic and what is Utopian?” (Bookchin 1991) When one introduces their ideals on society, their individualistic and/or altruistic ideals, and lays them down with the title Utopia, it is assumed their idealism is rationalistic.

The society of Plato’s republic falls into three distinct divisions: statesman, general civilian and the executive force. These are the natural divisions found in any society, generally. It is hierarchical and dominating. Without these three qualities, according to Bookchin, there can be no order.

“I love order. It’s my dream. a world where all would be silent and still and each thing in its last place, under the last dust…I’m doing my best to create a little order” (Clov in Beckett 57).

What the world is like and what we would prefer the world to be like has a very careful line in between. The ideals of past leaders and their dreams have consistently gone against the ideals of the collectives. For instance, Genghis Khan wanted his empire all for the sake of his people. This was his interest and turned into his necessity. His ideal society, his Utopia could not have attained the potential that it did without this logic.

“Just as King Midas transformed everything he touched into gold, so consciousness is itself determined to transform into the imaginary everything it gets hold of: hence the fatal nature of the dream…the odyssey of consciousness dedicated by itself, and in spite of itself, to build only an unreal world” (Sartre 1972).

Italo Calvino has some beliefs of the politically right and wrong uses of literature. Using his argument and Utopia being a sub-product of literature, I see the same relation with the use of Utopia; specifically that there are two wrong ways of a possible political use for Utopia. The first is to claim that Utopia should voice a truth already possessed by politics; to believe that the sum of political values is the primary thing, to which Utopia must simply adapt itself. This opinion implies a notion of Utopia as pretentious and redundant, but it also implies a notion of politics as fixed and self-confident: an idea that would be disastrous. This would lead to bad Utopia and bad politics.

The other mistaken way is to see Utopia as an assortment of eternal human feelings, as the truth of a human language that politics tends to overlook, and that therefore has to be brought up from time to time. This concept leaves more room for Utopia, but in practice it assigns it the task of confirming what is already known, or maybe of provoking in a basic way, by means of the youthful pleasures of freshness and spontaneity. Behind this way of thinking is the notion of a set of established values that Utopia is responsible for preserving, a classical and permanent idea of Utopia as the library of a given truth. If it agrees to take on the role, Utopia confines itself to a function of consolation, preservation, and regression — a function that could do more harm than good.

The ultimate ethical goal of human life is utopia, that is, a world in which meaning and life are once more indivisible, in which man and the world are at one. (Jameson 173.)

Just as there are two wrong political uses, there are also two right ones.

Utopia is necessary to politics above all when it gives a voice to whatever is without a voice, when it gives a name to what as yet has no name, especially to what the language of politics excludes or attempts to exclude. I mean aspects, situations, and languages both of the outer and of the inner world, the tendencies repressed both in individuals and in society. “Utopia is like an ear that can hear things beyond the understanding of the language of politics; it is like an eye that can see beyond the colour spectrum perceived by politics. Simply because of the solitary individualism of his work, the writer may happen to explore areas that no one has explored before, within himself or outside, and to make discoveries that sooner or later turn out to be vital areas of collective awareness.” (Calvino 246)

This is still a very indirect use for Utopia. The writer follows his own road and chance or social and psychological factors lead him to discover something that may become important for political and social action as well. It is the responsibility of the socio-political observer not to leave anything to chance and to apply his own method to the business of Utopia in such a way as not to allow anything to escape him.

Now indeed that nostalgic vision of some golden age in which an epic wholeness was still possible gives place to a view of history which sees men as already implicitly reconciled to the world around them, in the sense in which that world is itself necessarily the result of human labour and human action. (Jameson 190)

Utopia remains. Only, with Benjamin, it is a potential yet a physically unattainable condition ripped from any connection with progress. And that is because progress does not simply extend into the future, but depends upon the manner in which the past is appropriated. I offer Benjamin’s Angel Analogy as a metaphor:

“Shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating . . . His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe that keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress” (Benjamin 258).

By this example, history and the continual appearance of barbarianism is to blame for the regression of society. Shouldn’t this give Utopia a solid foundation of validity? It is only from the past and the presence of today that allows for Utopia to be used.

Every element of the past becomes open to redemption on the Day of Judgement. “Nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history. To be sure, only a redeemed mankind receives the fullness of its past — which is to say only for a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments. Each moment it has lived becomes a citation a l’ordre du jour — and that day is Judgement day.” (Benjamin 254)

A theological notion of remembrance contests the perversion of history by totalitarianism. It becomes the only way to deal with that “single catastrophe” on which one gulag after another “keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage.” (Benjamin 257)

Neither transforming the political judgement into one of utopian possibility merely an evasion, nor is Benjamin’s theory of the dialectical image sufficient; indeed, if reference to the struggle is insufficient for evaluating the techniques employed in the work, the use of those same techniques will not depend upon a particular political insight into social reality.

“Suicide is the achievement of modernity in the field of passions.”

Walter Benjamin

WORKS CITED

“A standard to which I may look and by which I may measure actions.”

Plato

• Beckett, Samuel. Endgame. New York: Grove Press, 1958.
• Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. New York: Schocken, 1985.
• Bookchin, Murray. The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy. New York: Black Rose Books, 1991
• Bronner, Stephen Eric. Of Critical Theory and Its Theorists. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.
• Buber, Martin. Paths in Utopia. Syracuse University Press: Syracuse NY, 1996.
• Calvino, Italo. The Uses Of Literature: Essays. Translated by Patrick Creagh. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986.
• Havel, Václav. “From a New Year’s Day Speech.” New York Review of Books, February 15 1990:
• Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form. Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ, 1971.
• Lawrence, T E. Men in Print: Essays in Literary Criticism. Golden Cockerel Press, 1940.
• Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Psychology of Imagination, Section IV. New York: Citadel Press, 1972.

I’m quite content that now there is a going to be a BarCamp in Croatia. The have their own site, but there is also the wiki version. It’s been over a year since my departure, so I regret that I’ll be unable to attend. I wish them well.

I brought an empty litre plastic bottle past the great TSA today, filled it up at the water fountain on the other side, and thus didn’t have to overpay for a basic need, transport of water.

That’d be the good news, because the bad news was encountering another blocked off area in an airport without access to fried food, or any good qualifying meal of empty carbohydrates that’ll allow me to sleep on a plane.

Ms Jen wrote that when travelling, one is set apart from home or your destination, it is a passage of sorts. When I travel, I experience this moment in time similarly, with a growing trepidation that each passage, journey, is that destination and the two points come together with the real purpose of helping me find what is really important to me.

You show up in a local coffee shoppe, or any place of business, and you will be greeted by the most jaded clerk ever. Irregardless of which shoppe, it’s sometimes perfunctory for normal folks to make weird out-of-place comments about inane arbitrary moments in time. This doesn’t happen in big cities. Folks there, normal or other, don’t have time to say weird things even if they do have time. The small towns that litter everywhere between the metropolises are ripe with folks who rise up to the common task of throwing witticisms to complete strangers, full of kind gentry who will smile and acknowledge ones vain attempts at humour or sardonic commentary. Santa Cruz has seen too much of that. Keep Santa Cruz Weird? Not right now. Don’t get me wrong. The town is great, just not weird.

It’d be nice to be in Las Vegas this weekend for Interbike, however I wait and pray that Dirt Rag will do a good job of covering the deal. What would one do if they were there anyway?

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant, for they, too, have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself to others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be, and whatever labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keeps peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

Found in Old Saint Paul’s Church, Baltimore: dated 1692

It’s father’s day this weekend and I will be with neither my boys nor my father. I will miss them terribly, just like I do every day.

The best truck there ever was.

My father bought a new pick-up truck in 1974. I grew up knowing that truck. Long story short, he bequeathed that truck to me in 1990. For the next six years, I drove that truck from middle America to the right, left, south, and north of all the continental united states. I even dragged it into Canada a couple of times. Six years in that truck, all to myself.

This is a great and sad story. Really. I love talking about the truck. Ask me to tell you more the next time I see you. The day I lost that truck was a day I learned that it might be better to invest your emotions in living breathing reciprocating animals, preferably human beings.

There was really nothing I could do. It was number eleven in an eleven car pile-up on the Delaware Turnpike approaching the Delaware Memorial Bridge, on August 30 1996. Nobody died, medically.

This is a photo I took with an old camera of mine. I have neither the truck nor the camera, but I do have this photo and their memories. Sometimes we’re lucky to have just that.

Had Derek Featherstone not mentioned anything, I would not have taken this photo.

I’ve had a copy of the PAS 78 since 27 June 2006. Had Derek Featherstone not mentioned anything, I would not have taken this photo. The terms and conditions aside, I couldn’t resist to show off my two copies.

The question that you are asked when you go to Wikimania is, Why are you here? I kept replying that I came to learn first hand how others are using wikis and Wikipedia in real world circumstances; and I was in the neighbourhood.

The real reason is more suspect. I went to Wikimania because I wanted to actually see the people that do it, Wikipedia in particular. The people that make it happen. I wanted to see what these humans looked liked and how they talked and how they walked. What kind of person would actually spend their spare time adding their knowledge to something that by its nature allows someone else to come along and edit or erase, or worse contradict, the knowledge that they have given. And then, not to take credit for it.

So this guy is talking about the location of knowledge and making light of Lawrence Lessig. The slides mean nothing of what comes out of his mouth, but ought to symbolise what is in his head. You had to have been there.

Well, that’s just whack.

So who are they? They are like everyone else who has a penchant for making social tools stronger. They are like those people that want to share what they know, their knowledge, even when you don’t ask for it. They are just like those kinds of people who want more from technology, and more from knowledge. They are like anyone and everyone you’ll ever meet.

I did learn other stuff, too. I learned about how wikis are being used to strengthen marginalised communities. I learned how organisations are using wikis to strengthen their workflow and internal operations. I even learned how Wikipedia is strengthening the integrity of user input. Whatever, right?

Wikimania 2006 has been blogged quite well. Yet, I believe, the underblogged of the whole event are the librarians. [That's all I'm saying, they were underblogged. I neither promise to write sufficiently nor will I.] This session was a panel composed of Meredith Farkas, Mary Carmen Chimato, Ellyssa Kroski, and Maureen Clements. They were my favourite because of my recent awareness of the awesomeness of what it takes to be a librarian and what it takes to run a library. As an aside, I’ve been using a local library in the US while here from which to work.

There were many other sessions worthy of note, many other folks very worth of note, however I ought to make clear really why I went. Intellectually, I support Wikimedia and their free-content projects, specifically Wikipedia. Detractors, as is their wont and as valid as they may be, decry qualities of Wikipedia that are irrelevant to its discussion in the now. Concept and infrastructure have never been the best of friends. Let us leave the cynics where they lie.

I assume that searching for knowledge is the reason one would seek an encyclopaedia. They are in search of an answer to a question. In my assumption, I attend the seeker to believe that the only tangible affect one can garner from knowledge is another question that will lead them to another, et cetera, and never the answer. An encyclopaedia. is only a resource. There may be an appearance of striving for definitiveness, however the permanence of a resource ought not and does not equate to authority. It never has.

At that @media 2006, there was this guy, Jeremy Keith. And he starts to explain, and then he elucidates, emanates, JavaScript really well and here he is giving us the recap. Somewhere in his melee of banter, he explains the Kobayashi Maru scenario and starts asking people where that comes from and if they answer it right they’ll get a book. I need/want that book, so I raised my hand because I was going to answer it but thank goodness I didn’t answer it because I was going to say something about Keyser Soze and Pete Postlethwaite come to mind from some other movie and not the movie that I ought to have known about, because I’m half mentally impaired, or something. What’s my point? Give us words all you want, but without emotions behind them, they’ll take us nowhere. Look it up. [I ended up buying the book and getting him to sign it to honour the emotion behind his words. Although a better preface would have made for a better forward.]

I found myself defending Shakespeare today after nearly ten years of not caring for the man, or his works.

Originally written in Spring 1996

Alice definitely has something against authority figures or something against the fact that they are authority figures, when in fact they are no smarter then she. She finds that she doesn’t want them, however she finds that when one appears by themselves she gives them the respect they deserve. She may think them odd after parting with them, yet she cares for their company. When new characters are introduced, if they are by themselves, they tend to gain Alice’s respect by helping her find her way through Wonderland or Through The Looking Glass. The Mouse in the Pool Of Tears, ignores Alice at first and then helps her only to find her a waste of his time and then leaves. The caterpillar helps her but has other matters to attend to. The Cheshire Cat helps Alice as needed and then disappears. And then the Duchess, who at first is introduced to Alice within a group setting, warms up to her wanting to be her mentor only to be ran off by the Queen who then takes Alice under her wing. The Queen has been very nasty with Alice while amongst a crowd, but now showers Alice with attention. The Queen then hands Alice over to the Griffin. Alice enjoys the company of the Griffin until she is introduced to the Mock Turtle, when the Griffin starts chortling very oddly with the story of the Mock Turtle. After this Alice is never alone with anyone until she comes out of her dream in the lap of her sister.

However, when characters are introduced in groups, there is always mass confusion. This stems from the fact that the characters involved are very mismatched.

Perhaps the exception to all of the previously stated observations is the White Rabbit. From the very beginning, the White Rabbit has no concern for nobody but himself. At first Alice scares him but then he mistakes her for his maidservant and sends her off on a mission. She instantly attends to the Rabbits demands only to find herself growing in his house which causes an uproar with the Rabbit. Then W. Rabbit brings his other servants in the picture only to cause the confusion of missed logistics on the part of Bill the lizard.

When Alice comes across the Duchess’s house, she immediately meets a messenger from the Queen and the Duchess’s doorman who is very depressed and no help at all due to the confusion inside with the Duchess, the cook and the baby. She leaves only to find herself stumbling into a very mad tea party. That explains itself. All of this is only in the first part of the stories.

Dodgson is interpreting Alice’s perception of the authority figures she comes into contact with everyday of her life. She sees adults by themselves very confident on matters of intellect, however when adults come together, they can never agree to make sense on anything. So Alice is seeing adults one moment being one way and then the next moment being another way. Constantly contradicting themselves making Alice believe that she is equal to them if not better then them at this point in her life, so there is no need for her to stay young anymore and might as well be a grownup. After all, this is what Alice’s sister is pondering after Alice tells her of her dream of Wonderland.

Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise. -the Duchess

Originally written in Spring 1996

Robert Penn Warren, in All the King’s Men, uses the crumbling of a political regime as background for Jack Burden’s search for self-confidence and self-esteem, which were really steps in his search for himself.

Men search. Jack learned that life was a series of unrelated events in which one’s actions were so determined that one was not to blame for anything. He learned that from searching into his own past. He also believed that a man must have something to live for. But is any relationship a relationship in time and only in time? Separated from both his real father and the man whose name he bears and whom he supposes to be his father, and believing that his mother does not love him, he was too unsure of his own worth to risk getting involved in life.

Men discover. Jack’s crisis began when he understood the relevance of the Cass Mastern story for himself. That with voices trapped in yearning and memories trapped in time, night was his companion and solitude his guide. He spent forever there and was not satisfied. He also learned of the affair between Anne and Willie.

Under the flood of words and the savage finger and the snapping eye, I jerked myself forward, dropped my feet to the floor with a crash, and lunged up to stand before her, while the blood pounded in my head to make me dizzy, as it does when you rise suddenly, and little red flecks dance before me and the words kept on.

He discovered that the toy was gone, the grass was trampled, the barn was down, the old people he loathed when he should have loved them had died, and he was what he was and there was no going back.

Men wander. He was constantly trying to relive his past or at least go back to the point in his childhood that made him aware of his innocence.

Then I thought of the image of the face on the water, under the purple-green darkening sky, with the white gull flying over. It was almost a shock to remember that, to have the image come back, for the thing which had, apparently, provoked the rapture had itself been lost and forgotten in the rapture which had exploded out into the whole universe. Anyway, now I saw the image again, and all at once the rapture was gone, and I experienced a great tenderness, a tenderness shot through and veined with sadness, as though the tenderness were the very flesh of my body and the sadness the veins and nerves of it. That sounds absurd, but that was the way it was. And for a fact.

Jack was aimless until Willie aimed him. But, Willie could not control Jack the way he controlled others – with a leash. Jack needed the ability to just get away. Whether it was wanderlust or escape, Jack constantly ran from something or ran towards something. Jack was a restless soul and knew something.

For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pine encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and see the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go when you hear that thar’s gold in them-thar hills. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go.

Men go West. Jack, when he learned of the affair between Anne and Willie, went West. For as long as there has been an horizon and as long as there has been a man, there has been the need to find out where the sun goes. First by foot, then horse, then ship and now by car.

I was headed back and was no longer remembering the things which I had remembered coming out….For example. But I cannot give you an example. It was not so much any one example, any one event, which I Recollected which was important, but the flow, the texture of the events, for meaning is never in the event but in the motion through event. Otherwise we could isolate an instant in the event and say that this is the event itself. But we cannot do that. For it is the motion which is important. And I was moving. I was moving West at seventy-five miles an hour, through a blur of million-dollar landscape and heroic history, and I was moving back through time into my memory. They say the drowning man relives his life as he drowns. Well, I was not drowning in water, but I was drowning in West. I drowned westward through the hat brass days and black velvet nights. It took me seventy-eight hours to drown. For my body to sink down to the very bottom of West and lie in the motionless ooze of History, naked on a hotel bed in Long Beach, California.

If there had been a solid piece of land mass that went completely across the world, somewhere between the two tropics and crossing the equator twice, so that he could completely drive west and never have to stop and turn back, Jack would not have stopped at Long Beach. He would eventually drive in a complete circle and come back to where he started. If he still hadn’t found what he was looking for or accepted what he found he could have just passed by and kept going.

Men accept.

So having lain on the bed in Long Beach, California, and seen what I had seen, I rose, much refreshed, and headed back with the morning sun in my face. It threw in my direction the shadows of white or pink or baby-blue stucco bungalows (Spanish mission, Moorish, or American-cute in style), the shadow of filling stations resembling the gingerbread house of fairy tale or Anne Hathaway’s cottage or an Eskimo igloo, the shadows of palaces gleaming hills among the arrogant traceries of eucalyptus, the shadows of leonine hunched mountains, the shadow of a boxcar forgotten on a lonely road out of the distance which glittered like quartz. It threw the beautiful purple shadow of the whole world in my direction, as I headed back, but I kept right on going, at high speed, for if you have really been to Long Beach, California, and have had your dream on the hotel bed, then there is no reason why you should not return with new confidence to wherever you came from, for now you know, and knowledge is power.

He was able to come back at once for he succeeded in persuading himself that everything was pre-determined. He had the knowledge that no one else had. Just as Willie Stark had knowledge on others for his gain of doing good so did Jack have knowledge to use against or for others.

But now, as I whirled eastward, over desert, under the shadow of mountains, by mesas, across plateaus, and saw the people in that magnificent empty country, I did not think that I would never have to envy anybody again, for I was sure that now I had the secret knowledge, and with knowledge you can face up to anything, for knowledge is power.

Men move on.

And so I had come home to the place where everything was fine. Everything was fine just the way it had been before I left, except that now I knew the secret. And my secret knowledge cut me off. If you have the secret, you cannot really communicate any more with somebody who has not got it, any more than you can really communicate with a bustling vitamin-crammed brat who is busy with his building blocks or a tin drum. And you can’t take somebody off to one side and tell him the secret. If you do that, then the fellow, of female, you are trying to tell the truth to thinks you are feeling sorry for yourself and asking for sympathy, when the real case is that you are not asking for sympathy bur for congratulations. So I did my daily tasks and ate my daily bread and saw the old familiar faces, and smiled benignly like a priest.

Even though he was still running, Jack had in him the life long search and the hope for the discovery that in the end, proves stronger than his longing to preserve his irresponsibility of leaving Anne and the dependency of a suitable parental figure in his childhood. Jack finally had something to live for.

1. Unreferenced and truncated facts and perhaps some unsanctioned initialisms:
   1. The Civil Rights Act (CRA) of 1964 and then the Rehabilitation Act (RA) of 1973, which contains many sections one of which is Section 508, led to The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which became effective in 1992. The ADA was reinforced by congress in 1998 with amendments to Section 504 and 508.
      1. Section 508 requires that any information technology that is developed, procured, maintained, or used by the Federal government to be accessible to people with disabilities.
      2. Section 504 discerns the Who, What, When, Where, and Why governmental agencies ought to abide by any and/or all of the above.
   2. A by-product of the RA of 1973 was the Access Board, or the Architectural and Transportation Compliance Board.
      1. The Access Board wrote Subpart B of Section 508 which contains the section 1194.22, Web-based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications, aka what’s in my head while I’m building your website.
2. In the end I will reference the USG Accessibility Design Course because it’s a bit more extensive. My goal here was to summarize and condense for future referencing when someone asks me, "Why?".

It all started when I saw a movie, the four feathers. I wanted to know more about it, so I looked it up at imdb and not satisfied with what I was looking for I did a google for it and found the original copy of the book at blackmask.com.

I was intrigued by the site so I went to the homepage and then to the about section where I learned it was more or less a personal project and the fellow behind the site had worked at Gaspanic. I only know of this word because it was/is the name of a bar that I went to in Tokyo, many years ago. Blackmask had a link to a .com website with the name so I wanted to take a trip down memory lane. Once I got to that link it didn’t seem like that was where I wanted to be, so I googled it and found the perhaps official site for the place. As poorly as it was designed, it did provide me with some memories, but not sufficient.

I went back to the next link on googled and found a personal journal of a personal time of someone else’s personal time in the same place on the same street in the same district of the same city in the same country I was so long ago. It then turns out that this site belongs to Justin Hall. So how has Justin Hall helped me out? Somewhere on his site he has talked about lacking focus. Has he? He says he has. Does he? I don’t know. Do I? Yea. Basically, I wrote this which is more than I’ve written about anything in a long while. Which may not make since, but I hope it all will some day.

I found you half dead crossing the desert alone and you say you are afraid?

Here is the history of my lack of focus today:

1. IMDB: The Four Feathers (2002)
2. “Four Feathers” trench – Google Search
3. Blackmask Online : The Four Feathers
4. Blackmask Online : About Us
5. gaspanic.com/
6. Gaspanic – Google Search
7. gaspanic.co.jp
8. links.net: Tokyo: Roppongi: Gas Panic Bar
9. links.net

Last night I went out with the rest of the world to celebrate the last year meeting the New Year. There were I’m sure over 100 people in a small townhouse in a downtown questionable part of DC, but of course very trendy and well decorated.

From what I gathered, all the people knew each other or were about to know each other. I wondered how many of them were bloggers and I wondered what they would say about the event the next time they blogged if they blogged anything about it at all.

I came to the party with two people that I knew because one of them knew someone (Person A) who knew one, (Person B), of the three people that lived in this place where the party was being held. Before we got there I met (Person A) who had invited along two other people, (Person C) and (Person D), who we had to pick up before we got there. So of the three hours at the party and the maybe two hundred people at the party, I only met (Person A) through (Person D) that night.

It’s sad to say also that I may never meet those four people ever again let alone the other three hundred people that went in and out of that party. I don’t know why I went to the party, but I did have a good time. I had a little champagne and a little kiss at midnight and plenty of hours of people watching.

The wondering that makes me rather peculiar is the wondering about if any of the four hundred people know or care about web standards or web accessibility.