Innovations to make cities smarter

Buildings that know when they need to be fixed before something breaks. Smart water and sewage systems that can filter and recycle water. Sensors that give fire departments details of a fire before they receive the emergency phone call.

Sounds futuristic?

These are some of the predictions IBM researchers say will make cities smarter over the next five years.

An estimated 60 million people around the world live in cities and experts predict population in the world's cities will double by 2050. As populations grow, city leaders are looking for ways to improve life in cities as they face massive urbanization and demands on their infrastructure.

IBM's annual "5 in 5 " lists 5 innovations that will change the way we work, live and play in cities.

• Cities will have healthier immune systems - Given population density, cities remain hotbeds of communicable diseases. But in the future, public health officials will know precisely when, where and how diseases are spreading – even which neighborhoods will be affected next.
• City buildings will sense and respond like living organisms - In the future, the technology that manages facilities will operate like a living organism that can sense and respond quickly, in order to protect citizens, save resources and reduce carbon emissions.
• Cars and city buses will run on empty - Vehicles will begin to run on new battery technology that won’t need to be recharged for days or months at a time, depending on how often you drive. Smart grids in cities could enable cars to be charged in public places and use renewable energy, such as wind power, for charging so they no longer rely on coal-powered plants.
• Smarter systems will quench cities’ thirst for water and save energy - Cities will install smarter water systems to reduce water waste by up to 50 percent. Cities also will install smart sewer systems that not only prevent run-off pollution in rivers and lakes, but purify water to make it drinkable. Advanced water purification technologies will help cities recycle and reuse water locally, reducing energy used to transport water by up to 20 percent.
• Cities will respond to a crisis -- even before receiving an emergency phone call - Cities will be able to predict emergencies in order to reduce and prevent them. Law enforcement agencies already use IBM software to analyze the right information at the right time, so that police and other law enforcement personnel can take proactive measures to head off crime. Sounds like that movie Minority Report.
  

IBM has posted a blog and accompanying YouTube video, that offers further insights about the innovations coming our way. I've also written a story about the innovations.

CIA invests in social media monitoring software

Could your blogs and tweets eventually be monitored by the CIA? An interesting article by "Wired" magazine's Noah Shactman, U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets, reports that the CIA's investment arm, In-Q-Tel, has bought a stake in Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. Visible's technology crawls through millions of web sites, picking up posts and conversations from blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube and Amazon, Shactman's article states. Currently, it doesn't touch closed sites such as Facebook.

In-Q-Tel spokesperson Donald Tighe told Shactman that intelligence agencies want Visible to keep track of foreign social media and give intelligence analysts early-warning detection on how issues are playing internationally. But as the article points out, the tool can be used inward to monitor domestic bloggers or tweeters. Visible already keeps tabs on web 2.0 sites for Dell, AT&T, Microsoft and Verizon. For instance, the company is monitoring animal-rights activists' sites for Spam-maker Hormel.

The article is a must-read along with Shactman's interview on DemocracyNow conducted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Oct. 22. As a Facebook and Twitter user some of the issues raised in that interview cause concern. Shactman noted that Microsoft and Google recently signed deals with Twitter and Facebook where all of our tweets and blog updates will be easily searchable via Microsoft's Bing search engine and Google. I wonder if my wall posts that can now only be viewed by my friends will now be exposed to the whole world? Or will the privacy of password-protected tweets and closed Facebook walls still be safeguarded?

A Time of Renewal

So, I was listening to the Kojo Nnamdi show Monday on my car radio (WAMU, 88.5 FM) as he spoke with the presidents of Georgetown University and the University of Maryland in College Park about their colleges and education. Both schools are located in the metro Washington, D.C. area

C. D. “Dan” Mote, Jr., the president of UMD, described going back to school after the summer break as a time of renewal. That resonated with me because I have a colleague at work who has returned to school to pursue a master’s degree. I’ve shared his excitement –and anxiety at times – as he returned to school after a long hiatus and worked his way back into the rhythm of classes, reading assigned books and writing papers. President Mote’s words also took me back to my college years when each fall was like a new beginning, a time of discovery, an intellectual adventure.

I yearned for that sense of renewal -- which brings me to the topic of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar that began for me and most Muslims on August 22 upon the sighting of the new moon. Ramadan is also a time of renewal. Ramadan, Muslims believe, is when the first words of the Qur’an were revealed by God to Prophet Muhammad via the angel Jabril (Gabriel) more than 1,430 years ago.

During this month, as instructed by God in the Qur’an, Muslims fast for 29 or 30 days about an hour before sun rises until sunset so that they “will learn self-restraint,” as one translation of the book states. Observance of the month does not only involve abstaining from food and drink and intimate relationships with one’s spouse during the daylight hours. It also means to abstain from bad habits or bad deeds. The aim is to reflect on one’s shortcomings through prayer and reading of Qur'an, and to increase one’s good and charitable works so that by the end of the month that person will have achieved spiritual, mental and physical renewal.

So, for those starting a new school year or engaged in observing Ramadan or doing both, open your mind and heart to intellectual and spiritual discovery. The days and nights are pregnant with new opportunities.

Agony at Gethsemene

One of the sites I found especially moving during my trip through Israel was the Garden of Gethsemene, where Jesus reportedly prayed(while his disciplines slept) and was arrested. We all have to go through those dark moments of meeting self, our own Gethsemene, which is why this site, along with the Sea of Galilee, stayed with me more than some others. I have been very bad about blogging Rutrell was better than I was during the spring--but we both plan to get regular soon. In the meantime, here's a photo of a portion of the Garden, which is outside the Church of Gethsemene. Some of the olive trees(the ones with really thick and gnarly trunks) date back 2,000+ years.

A Dog Named N...

I was channel surfing over the Memorial Day weekend and came across a movie called The Dam Busters, a 1955 British war film set during the Second World War.

Turns out the lead character’s black Labrador was named Nigger. That got my attention.

The Dam Busters is based on the true story of the Royal Air Force’s 617 Squadron and the development of the bouncing bomb. The Squadron used the bombs, which bounced across the water to avoid torpedo nets, in Operation Chastise during the attack on the Ruhr dams in Germany.

The movie stars Michael Redgrave as Barnes Wallis, designer of the bomb, and Richard Todd as Wing Commander Guy Gibson.

I didn’t watch the whole movie, by 12 midnight I was fading fast. But I did do a Google search afterwards and found out that, indeed, Gibson’s dog was named Nigger and he was the unit’s mascot. He was hit by an automobile and died shortly before the mission, an incident that is depicted in the film.

A remake of the film is reportedly in production. It is being produced by Peter Jackson, directed by first time director Christian Rivers and scripted by Stephen Fry.

Jackson hasn’t made a decision on what to call the dog. He’s in a no-win situation. If he doesn’t use the name Nigger then he risks not being historically accurate; if he does, he runs the risk of offending countless numbers of people.

Sir David Frost, the executive producer, has reportedly said that Gibson also called his dog Nigsy, so he prefers using that name.

I’m of the opinion that they should keep the name for historical accuracy. That was the name of the dog and it does say something about the mores and thinking of the time. Incidentally, I have seen some blog comments that ask, “Why do a remake at all?” There are too many remakes and less original content these days, they argue. I would say hear, hear, but that’s for another blog.

I don’t know what Gibson was thinking or if in his book on the mission he explains how he came about naming his dog. But I do think that the reason behind the name is not as simple as the dog was black. Some blog comments I have seen say that nigger means black and, at that time in England, the reference is to the dog’s color. Therefore the name is not racist, they claim.

Mmmm. “Negro” from the Spanish and Portuguese means black. However, nigger as a derogatory word to describe black people dates back to at least the 1800s. So, I’m quite sure people in 1940s England -- whose empire was once so vast that the sun never set on it – were familiar with the pejorative connotation of the word.

The trick for the producers and writer of the remake is how to keep the name but convey to a contemporary audience that the mores of the time were insensitive to the feelings and humanity of brown and black people.

That’s why they’re getting paid the big bucks.

See You at The Top

If you’ve read my profile you know that I trekked up Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania nearly two years ago.

Kilimanjaro is the world’s largest free standing mountain, 5,891 meters or 19, 330 feet at its peak.

And while I no longer dream that I’m actually climbing Kili – something that kept occurring weeks after the trek – I still think about that trip, our group of eight trekkers and the people I met along the way to the top.

One young man named Martin from Germany particularly stands out.

My group spent six days on the mountain – four days attempting to reach the top via the Machame route and two days descending. The group included my wife, her twin sister and her husband, my sister and her husband, my sister-in-law’s colleague Kimani, and a teacher from Vancouver, Canada I met on the bus from Arusha to Moshi, Tanzania who decided to join our group.

We met Martin on the second day at Shira Camp after a day of trekking that took us out of the green, lush rain forest into the rocky moorlands. He passed our camp in search of one of the many latrines scattered about the area.

We were relaxing, watching the many clouds float into the camp engulfing us, blocking out the sun and then passing on toward Kibo, one of Kili’s two snow-capped peaks. We exchanged greetings and all the inquiries about where we were from with Martin. At the end of the conversation, Martin said: “See you at the top.”


Afterwards, Martin and his group would pass us along the trail and we would greet one another. He was with a group of young British trekkers, probably in their late twenties, and as they passed us with hiking sticks in both hands, they seemed to be moving at a swift pace. I, for one, embraced the concept of “Pole, Pole,” slowly, slowly in Swahili.

“See you at the top,” Martin would always say as he passed.

The night of the ascent to the Summit --- you start the ascent at midnight to arrive at the top by sunrise – I crossed paths with Martin again. That last ascent from camp Barafu (which means ice in Swahili, so you get an indication that we were moving into the arctic region) everyone looks like coal miners because we have headlamps on to see. You look up the mountain there's a trail of lights, you look down the mountain another trail of lights.

My headlamp, unfortunately, did not work and as I and Kimani broke away from our group at a faster pace with Taday, one of our guides, I found that Kimani didn't have a flashlight and the batteries had died in Taday’s big flashlight. So it was dark. And it was a struggle trekking with a 35 to 40 mph wind blowing us around, our water bottles freezing, my legs becoming like lead. I had never experienced such exhaustion in my life.

As I rested on a rock, briefly contemplating turning back as I watched a man who had passed us along the way with his guide, now turning back -- defeated by Kili -- another group of trekkers, their headlamps lighting up the path, slowly trekked by.

The last one in line stopped, shined his light on me and said: "Hello."

I knew that voice. "Martin"? I said, exhausted.

"Yes. See you at the top," he said and he kept moving on.

I did make it to the Summit, a place called Stella Point, close to 18.840 feet or more, near the snowy crater – enough to get a certificate stating that I’d made it to the top. But opted not to push on to Uhuru Peak.

I didn’t see Martin at the top. But I did meet him on his ascent down from the Peak. “So you made it to the Peak?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “My friends made me.”

And he kept on trekking.

More Chris-Rihanna 'News'? No Thanks!

Are many people really lusting after more news on the Chris Brown/Rihanna abuse case? This was the argument Harvey Levin of TMZ.com, the celebrity news and gossip website, tried to make this morning on Reliable Sources. Howard Kurtz, the host and Washington Post news media critic, posed the question of whether the elite newspaper media felt above the story, since publications like the New York Times relegated the charges to a paragraph in the Arts section. In contrast, cable, network news, and tabloids gave the matter ample coverage. Too much, I’d say. My guess is that most Americans didn’t even know who these two were until Brown’s alleged attack. I think such coverage does shine some light on domestic violence(once again), so there is some benefit, but the blowup of the story on the evening news(I caught it on Katie Couric’s newscast) is why journalism has lost credibility with more serious news consumers. TMZ’s Levin tried to make the case that the failure to give people the kind of news they want—in this instance the Chris Brown story, which TMZ is all over—is why newspapers are suffering such losses, but that’s just his way of promoting his brand. Many newspaper readers are tired of the heavy focus on celebrity coverage and tabloid news. The celebrity obsession is fine for TMZ, but the Chris Brown/Rihanna story isn’t front page news in a world where there is so much economic and social upheaval worldwide. Put Brown in jail if he’s guilty, get Rihanna some counseling, and use precious news space for pressing issues facing us all.

Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World

Arab culture is rich and diverse.

That diversity is being showcased from February 23 to March 15 in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area as the Kennedy Center presents Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World. Over three weeks, more than 800 Arab artists will perform on the Center’s stages and public spaces to showcase the diverse traditional and contemporary cultures of the 22 nations that represent the Arabic speaking world.

The festival includes performances of music, dance, theater, film, and spoken word as well as exhibitions featuring art installations, fashion, cuisine, a marketplace, and more.

I got a taste of this festival last Monday night during a private gala performance at the Center’s Opera House. The opening concert included selections by The Children of Al-Farah Choir; Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, Bachir Attar and the Master Musicians of Jajouka; extract of various texts that have influenced the Arab world read by Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif; selections from Oman…O Man!, conceived and choreographed by Debbie Allen; and Marcel Khalife’s Al Mayadine Quartet.

I enjoyed all the performances and readings, which opened up a whole new world of artists for me. But two performances, I especially enjoyed: The Children of Al-Farah Choir and Oman…O Man!

The choir opened the concert with the girls dressed in flowing dresses with gold- colored embroidery and boys with dark pants and white shirts. They came down the aisles to the stage waving their right arms back and forth as they sang. They sang LoLolo, a Syrian folk song and a medley of other songs.

The choir was founded in 1977 by Father Elias Zahloui, in our Lady of Damascus Church in Damascus, Syria. It now consists of 500 volunteers aging between 7 and 80 years old, divided into 5 age groups and representing all Christian denominations. The group has traveled around the world spreading the message of peace and encouraging interfaith dialogue through music, according to the program.

Oman…O Man! incorporated the theme of prayer in an aesthetically-pleasing and spiritual way. As a young man dressed in a long white robe sang the call to prayer (known as the Adhan in the Islamic faith), other young men and women performed ablution for prayer or prostrated in prayer. On the background screen there was a slide show depicting scenes of desert sun rises and verses from the Qur an in Arabic script, attesting to the Creator’s ability to bring into existence the heavens and earth.

Debbie Allen – yes, she of the movie Fame and numerous other choreographed dances for film and theater -- spent three weeks in Muscat, Oman working with Omani and American youngsters. And now the Omani teenagers are here rehearsing over the next two weeks with their American counterparts from Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

From the Kennedy Center website:

At the center of the work are two young men--one Omani, another American--who meet at a military academy with cadets from all over the world. Though similar in age, these roommates don't really understand each other. However, through music, movement, song, and dance, they take a magical journey together and discover the similarities and the differences between their two cultures, and learn much about each other.

I am looking forward to experiencing more of this magic when I see the full performance of Oman…O Man! March 14. From the taste of I got, I don’t think Ms. Allen nor the Omani and American performers are going to let me down. Oh, by the way, did I mention the music is by trumpeter Arturo Sandoval?

I applaud those in the Kennedy Center’s international program who worked tirelessly over the last four years to make this a reality, providing a bridge between Western and Arab cultures through art, dance, music, literature, poetry and song.

Ain't Nothing But A Man

Was John Henry "Real" or "No Real"?

Most Americans of my generation and older are acquainted with the legend of John Henry -- that steel drivin' man who pitted human strength against a steam drill and won. He dropped dead, though, after his victory, so the songs and story goes.

I remember him, based on paintings or drawings in folklore and history books, as this massive, black man; heavy hammer raised high, ready to strike a spike into the railroad tracks. His claim was that he could do it faster and better than this new invention, the steam-powered drill. The classic story of Man against Machine.

John Henry told the Captain:

"A Man Ain't Nothing But A Man.
Before I Let Your Steam Drill Beat Me Down.
I'll Die With A Hammer In My Hand."

All legends, we are told, are based on some truth. I thought there might be some truth to the story but that it probably got embellished as it passed from people to people, region to region.

And, then, just recently at my local library, I came across a book on display, Ain't Nothing But A Man. My Quest To Find The Real John Henry (National Geographic, 2008). It was in the children's section and I thought it would be a good book for my younger daughters. However, after reading it, I see it might be more suited for middle schoolers and above. Written by Scott Reynolds Nelson, a professor of history at Williams & Mary College in Williamsburg, VA., the book is a detective-like account of how the author searched for, compiled, and analyzed material and stories that led him to the "Real John Henry."

Yes, there was a real John Henry. In fact, Nelson wrote an adult book of his search, Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry: The Untold Story of an American Legend that won an award for being one of the best history books of 2006.

More than 40,000 African-American men built and repaired the train tracks that wind throughout the South. We see them in old photographs taken in the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries. I often wonder as I look at the photographs what life was really like for them.

Some of their stories come to us through their songs. As the hammer teams lined up track, hammered them in place and blasted through tunnels, they sang songs to keep in rhythm with the work. There are hundreds of versions of songs about John Henry, and as Nelson points out, some of them contain specific information. (Listen to a Smithsonian Field Recording of John Henry, 1947-48).

Studying the various versions of these songs, culling through old ledgers and engineering reports, exploring old railroad tunnels, finding a clue in an old post card and the uncovering by a contractor in the 1990s of 300 bodies buried in the sands of an old penitentiary led Nelson to Virginia where the "real" John Henry was laid to rest.

It's a fascinating and chilling story to read because Nelson uncovers information about the most likely cause of John Henry’s death and the message hidden in the legendary songs to other steel drivin’ men.

Incidentally, the lore of the legend of John Henry was so big in African-American communities that many boys were named after him. The name of my father’s oldest brother? None other than John Henry Martin.

War Against Women in The Congo

The decade-long war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo claims at least 45,000 lives a month, according to an article in The Guardian written last year.

A brutal and vicious aspect of that war has been the violence against women. During the Monday, Feb. 9, 2009 broadcast of Democracy Now, Amy Goodman interviewed Playwright, V-Day Founder Eve Ensler and Congolese Gynecologist Dr. Denis Mukwege, who are raising awareness on the war on women in the DRC.

It's shocking, heartbreaking, outrageous...but definitely a call to action.

As a son of a loving and inspiring mother who taught me respect for women and all human beings; as a husband of a loving, thoughtful and caring wife; as brother of four sisters and father of four daughters, I pledge to dedicate my time and resources to fighting violence and abuse (both physical and mental) of women -- the first teachers of man -- at home and abroad.

Also, in my blog, I will be highlighting the accomplishments of women throughout history from the ancient to the present.

Billy Elliot: Good In Whatever Country You See It

Back in 2007, when I attended a West End performance of Billy Elliot the Musical, a woman sitting next to meet at The Victoria asked whether Americans would appreciate the British humor and context of the musical when it arrived in the states. I indicated my appreciation, but I was an American in London, which would have suggested some brush with British culture. She raised a good question, something I’d wondered since hearing that the production would make its way to Broadway. Through its book and lyrics (Lee Hall), music (Elton John), the musical conveys a greater sense of the British class and culture out of which the story and Billy emerge than the film did. I wondered how a work with more background on the 1984 strike, which accelerated the death of the domestic mining industry, and jabs at Margaret Thatcher (“Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher. We all celebrate the day, because it’s one day closer to your death”) would fare with an American audience unfamiliar with the strike.

No such barriers were on display at the matinee performance I saw Feb. 7, 2009. Americans laugh out loud at the Maggie Thatcher putdowns and other British-isms and are in awe over the talent displayed by Kiril Kulish, the Billy for that performance, and all the other young performers ( Frank Dolce as Michael and all the girls are stars in their own right). Okay, some attempts at the regional British accent are uneven and move in and out, but the producers are to be commended for not snipping out jokes or references. People who want to know what a pasty is (a meat and potato pie) can read the glossary (“The Miner’s Strike 101”) in Playbill. The London performance has a glossary, too.

Of course, there are some people who just don’t get theatre no matter where it comes from. In the women’s restroom I overheard a woman complaining because she had hoped the musical would end as the movie does, with Billy making that awesome stage entrance for Swan Lake. Anyone looking for the stage version to end like the film probably needed to stay home, get some popcorn, and pop in the DVD. It would have been cheaper. I won’t spoil things for people who may want to see the musical –I didn't tell anyone about this scene after I saw the show in 2007 –so I’ll just say there's an older Billy in a brilliant scene. It moves the story along in a splendid way.

I don’t know if I was aware of this the first time I saw the musical, but many people, myself included, find themselves shedding a few tears at points in the performance. We owe some of that to Elton John’s stirring music. His Once We Were Kings, which is sung by the miners as they go down into the mine after losing the strike, can make you want to go march with them – or march with somebody –even as it all seems futile. We’re happy for Billy but know that part of his story is the devastated people he is leaving.

Meeting Across the River

The half-time Super Bowl performance by Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band this past Sunday triggered memories of my first musical encounter with the Boss. I was a freshman at a small, liberal arts college in Connecticut during the fall of 1975 and my roommate borrowed this album – Born to Run -- from a friend. I recall the picture of Springsteen, guitar in hand, leaning on the back of his saxophone player Clarence Clemons, whose full body with saxophone extended to the back of the album cover.

I’m pretty sure we played the whole album and liked it. But it wasn’t the now famous songs Born to Run and Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out that stirred my emotions and imagination that night, although I enjoy the lyrics and music of those tunes. It was a song about a man who needed to get across the river – probably from New Jersey to Manhattan – to complete some murky deal with a man who you had to be careful around. So he turns to his friend Eddie for cash and, maybe, Eddie can get them a ride to the Meeting Across the River.

My roommate and I must have played the song several times, mesmerized by Springsteen’s laid back delivery accompanied by piano and the searching, haunting tone of the trumpet played by Randy Brecker. I could vividly see a man who probably had gotten himself in one too many bad deals and if this one didn’t pan out – “they ain't going to be looking for just me this time.”

Listening to a version of the song on YouTube the other day – a performance in 1977 by Springsteen with piano accompaniment – one of my sisters described it as “sweet, sad music.” Another sister, a jazz musician, noted the jazz influences and said the song shows “a mellow side” of Springsteen that she likes.

That it does. That it does. And in my memory I see two freshmen smiling, sitting in their dorm room, discovering the Boss for the first time.

"Hey, Eddie, can you lend me a few bucks
And tonight can you get us a ride
Gotta make it through the tunnel
Got a meeting with a man on the other side."

Addendum: No Quick-Fix Models Out There

This little annoucement that employees of The Day, in New London, CT., will take a week furlough with no pay to deal with a revenue problem is a reminder that newspapers owned through various nonprofit arrangements or trusts ultimately face many of the same problems as for-profit newspapers. There just aren't any quick-fix business models for what is ailing the industry, though the attempts to at least throw around ideas can't be dismissed.

When Giving Up Failing Business Models Isn't Easy

A New York Times article on the vulnerability of the billable hour, which is how lawyers price their services, got me thinking about the search for new business models in the news industry(though one could probably fill in the blank with any number of industries). As the NYT article notes, the billable hour, which clients have often felt worked against their interests, is how lawyers assign value to the time they, and sometimes dozens of others in their firm, work on a case. The Times quotes a consultant who observes, “When not paid by the hour, lawyers’ approach to their work changes.”

Most discussions on the need for a new business model to support newsrooms proceed as if the news business will be able to continue with its own basic assumptions about itself once the new business model is in place. Leaders are currently in search of models that allow them to continue what they’ve been doing. There’s little acknowledgment that many aspects of journalism, from its tone to its coziness with the status quo to its blind spots when it comes to recognizing on-the-ground change, need changing, too. One of the more apt quips on this point came across Twitter this week. In response to a NYT op-ed in which two endowment experts suggested that such nonprofit financing could provide a new model for journalism, Jay Rosen, known for his persistent efforts to demythologize journalism for journalists and the public, wrote:

Striking how this Times op-ed on endowments for newspapers (a new social
contract) expects nothing new of the journalism. http://is.gd/hxg4 8:24 AM Jan 28th

Nonprofit ownership of newspapers, an idea with buzz in certain sectors of journalism right now, would require a different relationship with the public, one that would cause journalists and those they serve to examine expectations and more explicitly address what it is journalism is or should do. Any change in a business model would have to do that, making more conscious what was previously taken for granted, or seen as a right. People don’t give up on old business models and the privileges it gives them that easily, even when those models are failing. But it’s difficult to decouple the business model and the practice (law or journalism) it sustains without having to ask difficult questions about the role of the profession and what it owes society. Everybody’s talking about “business models” these days, but their problems are bigger than that.

Reflections on Soaring with Fidel

I never thought that I could get engrossed in a book on bird migration. After reading an article about David Gessner in The Writer’s Chronicle on a long train ride from Hartford, CT to Washington, D.C. last year, my interest was piqued enough to buy his book, Soaring with Fidel. An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond (Beacon Press, 2007).

As Gessner states in his introduction, the book is not just about birds. It’s about the nature of human happiness. And “humans are never happier than when they are chasing something,” Gessner concludes after spending a year following birds and people who follow birds.

The book is about “people and flight and obsession and freedom and empathy,” Gessner says. And, yes, the birds.

Ospreys are large, nearly eagle-sized birds with a six-foot wingspan, I learn from Gessner. (He also wrote a book about the birds prior to this one called The Return of the Osprey). They are known for their daring dives for fish and physical features – “dark brown masks and vivid brown-and-white wing patterns.”

Gessner, a professor of creative writing at a university in North Carolina, set out on his trek during September 2004. He had lived on Cape Cod for several years and got acquainted with Osprey while they nested during the summers on the Cape. Now he wanted to see what they did after the fall.

That migration path took him from Cape Cod to Westport, MA; Long Island, NY; Hawk Mountain, PA; Cape May, NJ; coastal areas of NC; Florida; and culminates on top of La Gran Piedra – a huge rock in the Sierra Maestra Mountains of Cuba. And, then, on to Venezuela where many of the birds spend their winter.

Where does Fidel come into this? The BBC, apparently, was making a documentary on the migration track of the Cape Cod Ospreys with scientist Robert Bierregaard around the same time as Gessner started on his trek. Five birds on Martha’s Vineyard were outfitted with satellite transmitters so they could be tracked from Cape Cod to Cuba and beyond.

Gessner thought that he could collaborate with the BBC crew during his journey since they all had the same goal. However, the BBC producers decided they wanted to keep the story of the tagged birds under wraps until the documentary aired. This fired up Gessner's competitive spirit and he thought of himself as a rebel racing against the Brits.

Bierregaard, though, kept a web site on which he posted the movements of the birds along with interesting travelogues, so whenever Gessner had access to the Internet or contacted friends who had computers, he was able to keep up with the activities of the five birds. One, an adult male the BBC crew named Bluebeard, was one of the last birds to leave the Cape.

An attentive father, Bluebeard stayed in the area until late September caring for one of his young ones that couldn’t seem to get the knack of fishing. He would go out and come back wet but with no fish and then would sit on his nest screaming for food. Bluebeard would wind up bringing him fish. Gessner renames Bluebeard, calling him Fidel and has grand visions of meeting him as he flies over La Gran Piedra.

Do the bird and bird watcher/trekker unite? Well, you’ll have to read the book to find that out.

But, I must say that Gessner opened up a world I didn’t realize existed – a community of osprey watchers –experts and lay people , young and old, from New England to Florida, Cuba to Venezuela – that are all connected by their passion for the birds. Aguilas Pescadoras or eagle fishermen as they are known in Cuba.

I have become fascinated with these Cape Cod birds that migrate 8,000 miles on journeys fraught with peril to their winter homes in South America and back to their nesting places on the Cape in the spring. I’ll be looking for them in the coastal areas of Virginia and Chesapeake Bay area as they make their trek back north this spring.

This past fall as night fell, I listened…listened to the sound of life preparing for migration, more in tune with the rhythm of movement than I had been in past years. I, too, wanted to be on the move. And I’m somewhat envious of the Ospreys' freedom, their ability to travel over national borders and the restrictiveness of political systems that are hostile to one another.

More so than ever, I find the truth in a quote by the Scottish-born American naturalist John Muir that opens Soaring with Fidel.

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

Lesson of CNN's 3D Experiment: Multiperspectives are The Moment

Although I embraced the web much earlier than many others with a print background, I am still suspicious of the rush to use new technologies to do journalism. Such efforts often don't result in better and deeper information; you need ever-developing thinking, research, and writing skills for that. Expensive innovations like CNN's hologram reporter, which debuted on Election night, seemed awfully indulgent. But I see interesting possibilities for Microsoft's Photosynth technology, which CNN put to illuminating use on Inaugural Day. The on-line anchors urged people attending the swearing-in ceremony to send in photos they took during the moment Obama was sworn in( the masses of bodies armed with cellphone and/or cameras ensured there would be plenty). When the photos were uploaded into the software, the hundreds of different photos found one another to create a 3D panorama that allows a view of The Moment no one camera or perspective could capture.

CNN found a very smart way to incorporate user-generated content, transforming it into something with relevance for a broad population. Most news organizations haven't figured out how to utilize user-generated content creatively, so much of what they're getting is self-promotional at best. CNN has taken a page from the best practices of crowdsourcing: it found something that interested people and enlisted the troops to create a news feature out of that interest. Together, the crowd and the rest of us looking in benefit because we end up with a fuller picture of the event. While the vivid shots of the swearing-in carried by major news sites will be what is imprinted on most minds, the layers of the moment are visible for those who want to look. The technology helps to further problematicize photography and the notion that what one is seeing is "real." The frame of any one photo can only capture a fraction of what is "real," making what photojournalist and visual scholar Julianne Newton’s calls "visual truth" a point of contention.

What an interesting moment for Photosynth to get used on such a large scale. If there's anything people should get by now it's that we're in a time where multiple perspectives are critical for our survival and progress as a country and world. I'm hesitant to describe the technology as a metaphor or paradigm, but there's some instruction there.

What Would You Have Done?

For me, a film is successful when it leaves its viewers still thinking and talking about it the next day. Of course, this is a general statement; I am sure there are many really bad films that spark conversation for days on end. The Reader grabs the mind as it works its way through the story and leaves viewers asking one another questions about moral conscience and what any of us might have done when ordered to send people to their death during Nazi pogroms. Many of us have had these thoughts before, but the plot in The Reader, which is based on a German novel(Der Vorleser), by Bernhard Schlink, employs an unpredictable storyline of a middle-aged woman (Hanna, played by Golden Globe winner Kate Winslet) who, in 1958, takes up with a boy of 15(Michael) whom she forces to read classic works to her ( Homer, Chekov, Dickens); his payoff is great sex. The clandestine affair lasts only a summer, but the boy encounters his backstreet romance several years later when he and other law students attend a trial of former SS guards who locked 300 Jews in a church that caught afire from bombs. The prime defendant is the former sex-reading partner, and the young law student watches in anguish and struggles with his conscience as he considers but decides not to reveala secret about the former guard that might have some bearing on the case. The young man, whose older self is played by Ralph Fiennes, struggles with what he did or did not do through his life, though some emotional healing is suggested.

As Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioneers: Ordinary Germany and the Holocaust argues, the Holocaust was enabled by cultural collaboration with roots extending back centuries. In the Reader, we see the faces of female guards whose faces were recognized by survivors and who then become the face of evil for a guilty country, but many unnamed, faceless people were complicit in what happened. As one of the law students says, "everyone knew about it." This reality complicates the guilt of Winslet's character, but it doesn't make her innocent. She asks the judge, "What would you have done?", albeit in a manner of a someone asking about issuing a parking ticket rather than someone wrestling with leading 300 people to their deaths. The movie is satisfying, but not because it supplies any answers; it satisfies because it respects how difficult it is to truly understand how humans conceived, implemented, and enabled the Holocaust.

Welcome to Bizarro World:Fan Mail from Jail

I got a letter from a convicted murder serving life in Oklahoma. The envelope was stamped on the back with official notice that the letter was from an inmate--a warning before I crossed the path of no return and opened it. Apparently, the inmate read an article on the science of media bias that I wrote for Scientific American. Not sure if he read it in print or online. (Could he have a subscription?)He wanted to alert me to his writings on media and justice system bias against victims--something he knows firsthand because, he says, he was wrongly convicted. Although I saw a photo of my 'pen pal' online, I won't link to it, not knowing what sort of chain reaction it could set off. I got a couple of letters from inmates at Somers, a prison here in Connecticut, back when I was an op-ed columnist. I appreciate it when someone takes the trouble to write; it's just always a little surprising to know you've come to the attention of someone sitting in the big house. He seems to have an interest in DNA , which may explain his interest in science magazines.

A Deafening Silence

On Saturday, January 10, I attended the “Let Gaza Live” protest rally in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House and a few blocks south of the Hay-Adams Hotel where President-elect Barack Obama and his family are staying until they move into the Blair House and then onto the White House next week.

The rally and march, sponsored by ANSWER Coalition, Muslim American Society Freedom, Free Palestine Alliance, National Council of Arab Americans, and Al-Awda - International Palestine Right to Return Coalition, was an opportunity for me and others to raise our voices against Israel’s massacre of the residents of Gaza, many of them women and children.

Similar rallies took place across the nation in cities such as New York and San Francisco. In Washington DC, over 20,000 people took to the streets in the freezing rain to demand justice for the people of Gaza. Busloads of people came from as far south as Florida and from mid-western states.

The crowd was a diverse mixture of people, many of whom brought their children. Speakers included former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Mahdi Bray, Executive Director, Muslim American Society Freedom; Rev. Graylan Hagler, National President of Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice; Mounzer Sleiman, Vice Chairman, National Council of Arab Americans; Ralph Nader; Paul Zulkowitz, Jews Against the Occupation; Brian Becker, National Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition; Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, attorney and co-founder, Partnership for Civil Justice; and others.

Participants then marched to the Washington Post, where demonstrators protested the paper’s coverage of the massacre and its blackout of protest activities in the U.S. Unfortunately, the hometown paper chose to ignore the event.

I thought for sure there might be some coverage of the rising tide of dissident voices demanding justice for the people of Gaza where the death toll is reported to have topped 900, many of them women and children. I didn’t expect front page coverage but at least something in the metro section. Nada. Instead, the Post devoted space above the fold in Sunday's paper to a picture of President-elect Obama ordering a meal at a famous local eatery with the story in the metro section. The president-elect lunched with D.C Mayor Adrian Fenty at Ben's Chili Bowl on U Street. I like half-smokes too, if they're beef.

Fortunately, alternative and some foreign press have been documenting the growing momentum of protests against Israeli assaults on the civilian population of Gaza. Can mainstream media continue to ignore them?

Black Matriarchs (Sassy, of course) and the New York Times

Matriarch, of course, is an innocent enough word, generally meaning the elder female head of an extended family. That word has a lot of baggage in American culture, however. The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's infamous report, which spoke of black matriarchs emasculating black men, is one of the more vivid examples of the problem with the word. It kind of makes one wonder where someone with sense and sensibility was before the New York Times ran its page one piece on Obama's mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, moving into the White House, at least temporarily. This was no surprise. As the NYT reports:

After all, Mrs. Robinson, known as a loving, tough-minded matriarch who rarely shies from speaking her mind, has been the bedrock of the Obama family. During the presidential campaign, she retired from her job as a bank secretary to care for the Obama girls, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, while their parents were on the road.


Bedrock? Okay. Matriarch? Media have come to preference this usage when discussing African-American families for which there isn't a father in the picture. Although the NYT is trying to convey the sense of Robinson as an anchor amid change, it's not the best word choice here--especially not with the "rarely shies from speaking her mind." In other words, a sassy black woman. One suspects that, as a secretary to a bank executive, Robinson's former job, the woman had a sense of when not to speak her mind; we can also assume she won't be doing it in the White House.

Reporters should always think about word choice, but they need to spend more time thinking about how certain words perpetuate stereotypes. (Read short item on bell hooks, see Moynihan report and search document for matriarch references.)

I have a running joke/bet with a couple of family members. We know that having Obamas in the White House will invariably result in a lot of articles in which journalists will seek to explain black people to America. I've told a couple of my siblings that the first time we catch a glimpse of little Sasha playing with a black doll, there'll be all sorts of national discussion about the choice of color for her doll, and surely questions about whether she has a proper mix of white and black ones, and so on and so on. Think I'm wrong? News coverage gets dumb like that.

Do ABC and BBC Share a Similar Lens on Iraq?

This plan by ABC to get its Iraq coverage from BBC makes me wonder whether the two will have disagreements over what should be on the air. Granted, the news out of Iraq right now isn't of the shock and awe sort, and ABC has a relationship with BBC that goes back to 1994, according to the The Hollywood Reporter article. Yet, although academic studies have found US and UK media coverage of the war in Iraq to be more similar than dissimilar, BBC certainly has an edge that attracts American viewers looking for an alternative to US TV coverage. It'd be interesting to track what ABC uses from the BBC versus what BBC puts on the air in the UK. Too many projects; not enough time.

At Some Point, Readers Got Smarter Than Their Newspapers

Others will have more useful economic insight to add after reading this Atlantic piece on imagining a world without the New York Times. Sadly, it isn't hard to imagine, or get used to. I say this as someone who has the NYT delivered each day and assigns it in the classroom. Yet I've long tired of Sunday Styles and other features that spin the world in the image of New York elites. Of course, it's not fair to overemphasize the consumption-oriented features running throughout the paper. The NYT is distinct among American newspapers for its ability to bring long solid explorations of Darfur and other crises around the world. And yet, for people who are really interested in the world, the NYT , or any one newspaper, isn't enough. Mainstream journalism, even the elite publications, never really caught up with the rising need for complexity and discernment of segments of the news audience. Most of the current problems in the news business have been pinned on the Internet--and technology and an outlived business model are huge challenges--but there has also been a mismatch between the general mental structure of journalism and the mental maps many people are developing about the world. There's always been this lowest-common-denominator group that salivates for news of Britney and Paris, and it would be an error to claim huge numbers seek intricate analyses of international affairs. However, there have always been intillegent people in the huge middle who would have stepped up and become more engaged if journalism had been smarter about it all. The acclimation to new news forms has always been a process, and in the same way that people got used to personal finance and health news, or fluff, they could have become accustomed to substantive, citizen-oriented newsforms if that had been the primary mission of news organizations. I don't want to make it sound so simple. The problems with journalism are not unrelated to problems with education and governmental institutions, but one has to start somewhere along the loop.