Issue 40: Don't Bother Me, I'm Thinking
By Medulla Vesuvius

A Democracy of Voices

Dr. Roger Korby and Amdnarg Toh are the two technology writers for Nerd City, which is as it should be. Anytime I write about technology I always seem to come across as a cranky Luddite. And I’m sure this article will seem to be no exception.

But let me say from the outset that computers, the internet and technology in general are not the main players in what follows. I’ve been musing on culture lately. But I have to discuss technological trends to do it.

I can really say this in one sentence: Through the wonders of the internet, there is a potential democracy of voices like never before.

Anyone with a computer and a connection to the internet can potentially broadcast any and all thoughts that happen to occur to them. Any creative impulse, recounting of daily minutiae, obsessive interest, or important message for mankind can be expelled into the void in any form—old school communication like words and sentences like the article you’re reading, audio, pictures, or even video. (Have you heard of this new thing they’ve got called “YouTube?” I hope so, because it’s named after you.)

This is a world in which everything is possible as far as “expressing yourself” to other people is concerned. And my initial image when thinking about this was that of a world with a billion or so islands, each occupied by one person and a limitless supply of messages in a bottle. You’ll notice in this image that there is no “Bureau of Message Regulation.” Each message is equally important and valid.

But that’s not how real life is, though, right? In real life there are voices that get heard more than others. These are voices of authority. They are journalists, “experts,” entertainers, etc. You read what they have to say in newspapers and magazines, see them on talk shows, pay beaucoups of money to watch them perform in concert…But it appears that they are a dying breed.

This all became clear to me a few months ago as I was reading The Onion’s AV Club. At the bottom of every page was a divided section for “Comments.” I was struck by two things. 1) Underneath every album and movie review there was literally page after page of comments by readers, the first one invariably saying something along the lines of “I’m the first to comment. Hooray!” 2) Every interview had at least one comment that said: “Good interview.” I wondered what the criteria were for a “good” interview. I always thought that interviews were fairly value neutral. One person asks another person some questions and writes down the answers.

And that particular instance betrayed a larger trend. Seemingly everything is now available for opinion. For instance, you can choose to make public your agreement or disagreement with some news article about Vladimir Putin, regardless of the fact that you may have never stepped foot on Russian soil or the fact that you can’t name a leading figure in Russian leadership. (I certainly can’t.)

I realized at that moment how old school I am. There are few things I would rather read less than the opinions of some random people…maybe the phone book. (I’ve never read “Letters to the Editor” either.) But underneath this preference of mine lies a huge assumption-that some people’s utterances are of more value than others.

Have you ever seen those CNN polls where they ask people questions like “Is the troop surge in Iraq succeeding?” Well, I imagine there is a pretty small number of folks who could actually answer that question with any degree of authority and I’ll guarantee you none of them are sitting at home responding to internet polls. But still we feel a need to know what other people’s perception of a situation is, regardless of their credentials.

I trust what a journalistic professional has to say about the latest developments in culture, for instance, much more than your average joe off the street. The professional journalist, I assume, spends his or her time poring over recent research and boring sources and reports the aggregate results so I don’t have to do all the legwork. Your average “commenter” just has an opinion to voice. However, it could also be that the journalist just makes everything up like Jayson Blair did or just fakes it, like Medulla Vesuvius.

I have a feeling that this idea of professional writers and thinkers is becoming quaint. For, what are the media if not a grand cascade of the opinions of random people? When I read reporting or commentary by someone with an actual by-line, I really don’t know them any better than a random “comment” poster. Maybe I justify my faith in the professional by saying I read their column regularly. I know them. Or I say to myself, “Surely they wouldn’t have been hired to write by a company if they didn’t know what they were talking about.”

Anyway, all of this leads to the fact that, with the increased ability of people to speak their mind and have others actually hear it, the unmitigated truth of matters, (if such a thing exists), can become obscured. Authority can easily be lost in a sea of mere opinion.

Whether you describe this situation as: a) a “democracy of voices”-a Miltonian system in which only the best ideas win the day, or b) a noisy “Cacophony,” depends upon your general outlook on life and faith in humanity.

Issue 40: Sydney Brown's Sixty Seconds
By Sydney Brown

Sydney Brown’s Sixty Seconds

I’ve been somewhat out of action lately, and you all get to be rewarded. Here’s some movies I’ve been watching:

Mystery Date (1991) Ethan Hawke, Teri Polo *1/2

Basically a teen version of After Hours, Hawke is a shy kid too afraid to ask his next-door neighbor out, so he assumes the identity of his much cooler older brother only to discover his brother has mob ties and two dead guys in his trunk. Film actually has a few good ideas and starts off well, but most scenes end up in the variety of, (“Ethan: Hey, what’s that? Bad Guy: Where?” Then Ethan runs away.) Not to mention the subplot somehow becomes the main plot in the last half hour involving guys nobody cares about. But the lesson learned? If you almost get your date killed, she will be SURE to have sex with you when the date is over.

Real Life (1979) Albert Brooks, Charles Grodin ***

Extremely funny and odd movie about a film producer looking to document a family’s life for a year, only for the film to end up being more about himself. Albert Brooks’ directoral debut is both dated and twenty years ahead of the TV reality craze. Many jokes fall flat, but some of the satire is merciless: Brooks’ fear of minorities, the insane cameras used, and the fate of a horse for starters. Not his best work, but an underappreciated gem. Listen for Harry Shearer as one of the cameramen.

Broadcast News (1987) William Hurt, Holly Hunter ****

Back in the 80’s, flash was replacing substance in TV news, and this film chronicles that trend. William Hurt is an “all-style-no-brain” reporter, Albert Brooks is an “all-brain-no-style” reporter and Holly Hunter is the self-controlling producer who both reporters want. A savagely funny portrayal of how TV was and still is, twenty years later. Hunter loves Hurt even though he’s not very smart, despite her intellectual equal, (Brooks), being in love with her. Film is ultra-realistic in that it’s the little gestures that ruin relationships, not the big ones.

Mystic River (2003) Sean Penn, Tim Robbins ***

Mesmerizing two hour film that falls apart in the last twenty minutes. Three childhood friends experience tragedy when one of them is kidnapped and molested, and the three reunite years later when one of their daughters is brutally murdered. Penn and Robbins both won Oscars, (and deservedly so), for their roles as a grieving dad and an emotionally scarred parent, and the acting is tremendous. The problem I have is that the movie cheats, all but forcing you to look one way solely to give you a “gotcha” involving characters barely hinted at in the film. And the moral of the story left a very bitter taste in my mouth. Maybe that was the point, I don’t know. A very good film, but one that could have been great.

Superbad (2007) Jonah Hill, Michael Cera ***½

Every column I seem to proclaim a new “funniest film of 2007.” I think this is the last time I do that. Two less-than-popular kids try to score alcohol for a huge party, but the plot is meaningless. A rare film that is both incredibly smart and incredibly dirty, the movie hits all the right notes, and even the slow scenes know they are slow and end quickly. Obviously the McLovin character is the breakout, but the two cops pretty much steal the film themselves, reinventing the “bad cop” stereotype. The film works because the characters are believeable and we actually care about them.

Issue 40: Various and Sundry
By Amdnarg Toh

Home-Brew Folk

Ok… since I’ve now embraced this bluegrass “funk” in which I find myself, I thought I’d elaborate on some of the more interesting musical experiences of my youth. If you didn’t grow up in the south with parents that had a penchant for southern gospel music, then you may not even have heard of these, much less seen them played live. I’ve seen ‘em all.

My parents attended a small Freewill Baptist church in Arkansas when I was in the first and second grade. Usually, one Sunday out of the month was “Singspiration Sunday”. This was basically an excuse to have a chaotic musical free for all, with the intent of somehow lifting us all from our spiritual complacency into heavenly bliss. Often it was a chore to endure to the end - now that I think about it, I did become more patient. Maybe that’s the enlightenment I was supposed to get. Anyway, I about flipped out when I saw a guy bust out a hammer and hand saw. By placing one end of the saw in his lap, and holding the other end in his hand, he was able to hammer out a tune, accompanied by the church pianist.

My next introduction to homegrown music was at Silver Dollar City in good ole’ Branson Missouri. Often, the park would invite local musicians to play at various venues to entertain the visitors. I was sitting listening to two guys, one with a guitar and one with a banjo, strumming and picking along just fine. Then a guy walks up in overalls. He must have been around 70 or so. He donned some of the old strap-on roller skates with metal wheels. I thought – “What’s he up to?” He proceeded to do a kind of sliding/rolling tap dance as a percussion back-beat to the bluegrass the two other guys were playing. It wasn’t bad percussion, mind you, just atypical. In fact, I was more interested in whether he was going to fall and break a hip than I was about the quality of the beat he was a’ layin’ down.

The most recent example was of someone “Playing the Bones”. No – that’s not some sort of tawdry euphemism. Playing the bones is another percussive technique that involves the use of rib bones or wood carved in the shape of rib bones. The bones are held between the fingers, and a technique used to flop the arms and wrists in the air and against the chest to create a clickety-clack kind of percussion, in time with the music. Two of the most popular techniques are called the “full upper body dry heave” and the “epilepsy in A minor.”

Another back-woods folk instrument worth mentioning is the jug. Most kids have at one time or another made a soda bottle whistle by blowing across the opening. Some have even noticed the differing pitch as the bottle is emptied, and have set up multiple bottles with differing levels of fluid in them to produce multiple notes. But the standard is to use empty ceramic moonshine, or corn mash jugs, sans alcohol. Some say that the enlightenment to play the jug comes during the emptying process. Anyway, large jugs such as the kind that are typically portrayed in bluegrass settings, are used as a droning bass percussion. However, I once saw a group of about ten people, each with 3-4 soda bottles, play a fairly complicated multi-part musical number, handbell style. It was in Mexico, on a work and witness trip, so I’m not sure it counts in my litany of southern culture home brew instruments, but hey – this is my story.

Issue 40: Superhero Information Initiative
By The Dude

All Hail The Queen

If you have not heard, Ms. Munroe recently married T’Challa, a.k.a. Black Panther, and is now Queen of Wakanda, quite a step up from princess of some remote tribe in Kenya…oh, and smoking hot leader of the X-Men. Some would not have seen the beauty of little Orphan Ororo, but T’Challa fell in love at a young age. When a little 12-year-old street thug saved him from racist gang bangers. Storm was always the hero, even as a thief.

If you have lived in a hole, or some country that has no outside contact, like Wakanda, then you may wonder who this enigma of a woman is. Daughter of Princess N’Dare and Dave Munroe, Ororo Munroe is orphaned at a young age, and grows up as a pickpocket in Cairo. Some time in her teens Ororo begins to manifest some weird… ummm… talents, and heads out into the Serengeti, where savage cannibals kill and eat… wait that was a different African woman. I mean she was worshipped as a goddess. What would you do if some beautiful young African teen came wandering into your village and she could control nature, ride the winds, sometimes hers eyes glowed blue and she had pure white hair? Worship her until Professor X comes recruiting, that’s what.

Storm first joins the X-Men in Giant Size X-Men #1. She quickly becomes a fan favorite, and a powerful member of the team. So it’s not surprising that she eventually replaces Scott Summers, a.k.a. Cyclops, as team captain. She continues to be on the X-Men line up in some form or fashion for over two decades, (in real world time), and most often as team captain. She even beats out Scott as team captain during a period of time when her powers are lost.

The loss of her powers is due to her being shot by a weapon of Forge’s. She is clueless to his involvement. So she has no reason to not fall madly in love with him as he nurses her back to health. Things don’t go so well for him, though, when she does find out. Thus starting an on-again, off-again relationship depending on who is writing the X-Men and which arc of the story line you are reading. Luckily Forge, Storm, and the writers all came to their senses and moved on.

Storm did this punk stint in the 1980’s, were she went with a black leather halter-top, skintight black leather pants and white Mohawk. I am sure you saw her guest appearance in Mad Max Beyond ThunderDome. (I think that was her.) It took her a while to grow that hair back, and reestablish her image as a regal African princess. If you came across her for the first time during the punk era, (me), it may have also taken you some time to see her as anything more than some bee with an itch. Looking back on it now, you may appreciate the significance of an African female leading a team of 90% white guys as far back as the 1970’s.

Now back to the present. After a whirlwind tour of the world where Black Panther and Storm visit other powerful mutant, and sometimes royal allies, they honeymoon as Mr. and Mrs. Fantastic. So Stretch and Peek-a-boo, (my pet names for Mr. Fantastic and Mrs. Invisible), get some much-needed alone time. After which, they returned to Wakanda to live happily ever after… and then they invited Wolverine to visit.

Issue 40: Spotlight on Technology
By Dr. Roger Korby

Future Computers

The other day at work some colleagues and I got into a rather enjoyable conversation about Moore’s Law, (I know, you’re thinking about the countless number of times this has happened to you.) The Moore from “Moore’s Law” is Gordan Moore, one of the co-founders of Intel. In 1965 he observed that the number of transistors, (tiny electronic on/off switches), that could inexpensively be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every year. This has held true for the last 40 years but we may be approaching the physical limits of what is possible with our current technology.

Scientists are working on technology that may power the computers of the future. These are all currently at very early stages in their research and if you were to see one of these future “computers” it would probably just look like some random lab equipment strung out across a laboratory work bench.

Quantum computers would operate based on certain qualities of quantum mechanical phenomena. In a transitor-based computer, information is stored in a two-state bit, (0 or 1), but in a quantum computer, information is stored in a qubit, (quantum bit) which can be a 0 or a 1 or any value in between. It’s complicated but, in essence, a quantum computer could do a lot of calculations simultaneously. Quantum computing is still mostly theory but there has been some experimental success at computing by manipulating the spins of a molecule’s nuclei or using laser and filters to create and manipulate those weird quantum mechanical phenomena mention above.

Another approach is DNA computing. This approach uses enzymes and DNA molecules to do many calculations at once. A few highly specialized DNA computers have been built that were able to do certain calculations thousands of times faster than traditional computers.

Yet another computer technology that is being researched is the optical computer. A computer that operated by manipulating light could be much faster than one that depended on the movement of the much slower electron.

One question I asked my co-workers in our conversation was, do we really need faster computers? What if what we really need is better software? Niklaus Wirth, (a computer scientist that created several programming languages), made the following observation in 1995: “Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.” This has come to be known as “Wirth’s Law” and I think it pretty much sums up the shape of computers today. Building efficient software is hard and expensive and programmers use all kinds of tricks and tools that take care of the harder parts of the work for them. This abstraction, or moving further away from the language the hardware speaks, (ones and zeros), makes the software run slower. So far, the approach that most software companies have taken is, “well, it takes too long to write efficient software and there’s no need to anyway, because next year’s hardware will run it twice as fast anyway.” This assumption may not be true for much longer and I hope that we soon see a shift in software where programmers (or their purse-strings holders who decide how long they spend on projects) start focusing on building better, faster running software.

One positive change I see coming is Apple’s next month release of OS X 10.5 Leopard. This new operation system includes changes that help developers make use of the multiple-core 64-bit CPUs that every new Apple computer ships with. Leopard has several other advantages over Mircosoft’s new OS, Vista in that OS X 10.5 will run all the old 32-bit applications and drivers seamlessly and there is only one version of the operating system, (as opposed to Vista where if you choose to install the 64-bit version, none of your 32-bit drivers will work.)