The best new gadget of 2008...

Well, its not really the best new gadget of 2008, but it does seem to be the year that it is finally gaining traction in the market place. I am referring to the ebook reader.

Frankly, most gadgets have their moments of coolness, but ultimately fade into the mass of gadgets that we have that have but a small impact on our lives. Only occasionally, say every 3-5 years, does something come along that, I feel, really changes how things work. Blue Ray, for example is great, but it is not fundamentally different than DVDs, which in many respects was not a huge change from VCRs... All enabled people to watch movies in their own homes. Hi-Def TV, likewise is not really all that big of a step compared to the first time people could turn box on and see Uncle Milty come into their homes. The computer and the cell phone were really the last devices (in my opinion) that really did that. I personally feel that ebook readers could do that as well...

Of course, one might ask why when reading is not exactly sweeping the world for the first time and in fact many people rarely read in their free time at all... not when their are video games, TV, youtube, itunes and a host of other things competing for our increasingly short attention spans. And I will admit for the mass of people who rarely read, they will probably barely notice ebooks or ebook readers. That being said, for those who do read, the ebook reader, whether a device like the Kindle, or software like Stanza on the iPhone, makes books far more readily available and convenient than they have ever been before.

Whats more, thousands of titles are available to read on these ereaders.. in fact there are probably more books available than even a serious reader is likely to read in their lives. Thanks to the efforts of the good people at Project Gutenurg, Manybooks and Feedbooks, there are well over 20,000 English Language books available for free (these books are in the public domain or are in free release by the publishers or authors of said books). There are tens of thousands of other (usually newer) titles available at fictionwise, amazon, manybooks.net and others.

All of this makes books easier to acquire (you need wait only seconds for most books to download from any of these sites and from the free sources you don't even need to pay) to store and often to bring with you. The average ebook is small so 1000 or more might fit on a single 2GB SD card... Imagine going on vacation and being able to bring your library with you. I have also found ebooks more convenient for reading on the gym and I suspect public transport as well... and put your ereader in a plastic ziplock bag, and reading in the bath has never been so easy :).

Well, thats all I have for now. But anyone who wants to learn more, I suggest they check out teleread.org and mobileread.com.

The Giving of a Child

I was at church the other day, and during the collection I noticed something; something I notice now and then but rarely think about. Children love to put money in the collection basket; they will put a dime or a twenty dollar bill in and it doesn't really matter, it is the act of giving that thrills them.

Not don't get me wrong, I am not idealizing children here, they can be selfish and cruel and I suspect that they get a thrill out of putting money in the collection basket simply because it makes them feel a little more significant in a world were they often feel very small. Still I think at least a small part of their joy and perhaps a large part comes from the fact they do love giving for giving's sake.

It is a shame that so many adults have lost this love. When we give at all, we often give with at least a small amount of resentment or with the suspicision that those who receive our charity will misuse it. The thing is, how our charity is used should never be our concern. If our charity is misused it is not our fault; it is the fault of those who misuse it.

Let us remember that what we have been given is a gift that is meant to be shared. If we don't share our gifts then it is us who are guilty of misusing charity.

Letting Employees Have A Saturday or Sunday off is a mistake.

According to CNN, a recent law that was passed Virginia now requires all employers to allow their employees to have either a Saturday or a Sunday off (depending if it is their religious Sabbath or not). This is not what I find shocking, what I find shocking is that this is considered a mistake. Essentially the law removes a number of exemptions that certain businesses, particularly retailers have enjoyed under previous laws.

Now granted, I like most other Americans have enjoyed taking advantage of shopping on Saturdays and Sundays and at least for the foreseeable future that will require people to work on those days. However I wonder if we are not trading something more important in the exchange.

Until I suppose about 20 years ago, most stores other than grocery stores and a few other stores would be closed on Sundays. Now generally the argument was that such laws allowed families to have at least one day together. In reality of course, just like having the weekends off in the first place, the laws were enacted in deference to our Judeo-Christian background. Such deference of course would be unconstitutional according to 1st amendment prohibitions.

All that being said, requiring that the vast majority of people did in fact have Sunday off did have beneficial effects. Sunday was once a day reserved for God, Family and Friends (well and NFL football, but back then the seasons were shorter too). Because people couldn't shop, couldn't run errands, they didn't. Prior to that Saturdays were reserved for those activities (and while I am not sure of it, I expect there was a time, when most business were closed on Saturdays as well). Now many people, even people who nominally work Monday to Friday, work on Saturdays and run their errands on Sunday. And of course, every year we probably see larger and larger numbers of people working on Sundays.

Our culture has descended so far into materialism that we are in a constant quest to get more stuff. Bigger faster cars and SUVs (how many people really need a car that will do 0-60 in 5.4 seconds and has a top speed of 140 mph?), more complicated and technical stereo systems (Does one really enjoy a rock concert or a symphony more when heard with 6 speakers as opposed to 2?), and houses. We, all of us, have forsaken spending time with our families, and if we believe in him, God so that we can get more of these things. Does this really make us any happier? I don't think so.

When I was growing up, and even today, my happiest times involved spending time in my parent's kitchen listening to them and occasionally my Dad's brothers and sister (None of my Mom's siblings live in the USA, so I saw them much less often) talking about growing up in Ireland. Both my parent's grew up on farms and under conditions that in our modern age would have been considered abject poverty. Yet my parents never really knew they were poor because everyone else around them was as well. Yet for all their lack of stuff, for all the chores that come from working a farm without any modern equipment, I always sensed that their childhoods were filled with much happiness. I doubt that kids playing Nintendo today are any happier and perhaps less happy than my Parents were growing up.

Does this mean I think we can be happy by giving up all our stuff? Well maybe, but I don't think that is really the answer. The answer relies on no longer worshiping our stuff. We need to start recentering our priorities to Family and God. Do we really need that promotion or do we want it because of the extra prestige that goes with it? Is it worth missing a minute of time with our families? Is it worth missing hours every day? Days every year?

When we die, would we prefer that we are remembered as a good friend, father/mother, brother/sister, daughter/son or that we be remembered for having lots of stuff, working 70 hour weeks, and climbing to the top of the corporate ladder?

America is Back in Space

Ok, as any of my friends could tell you, I am a space nut. I love Astronomy, the Space Program and heck, even Scifi B movies that feature space in some way shape or form (and usually get the science really wrong). I was devestated when first the Challenger and then the Columbia space shuttles were destroyed. If I had been alive at the time I probably would have been devestated by the Apollo I fire.

Well today my friends, I am happy to say that Americans are back in space flying their own spacecraft. No, NASA did not have an unscheduled launch of the shuttle or haul the Saturn V out of retirement. This trip to space was conducted by a small odd looking craft that was built with funds from MicroSoft founder Paul G Allen (I hate it when MicroSoft gives me a reason no to hate them :)), designed by Burt Rutan (who also designed the Voyager plane that was the first air plane to fly around the world without topping up at the local fuel station (flying or otherwise)) and flown by Michael W. Melvill, a well regarded commercial test pilot.

This story may not have quite the same romance as two bicycle shop owners building an airplane or of a nation pulling resources together to reach the moon, but it is remarkable none the less and may have a bigger impact on the future of transportation than any event since two bicycle owners figured out how to make a plane fly. This little craft dubbed SpaceShipOne is designed to be able to carry three men into space, return to a safe landing and then be ready to fly again inside two weeks. If they do accomplish two flights within 2 weeks carrying 3 people, they will win the 10 million dollar X Prize, of course SpaceShipOne is estimated to have cost more than 20 million dollars, so no one is going to get rich from the prize alone. Still while this may seem like alot of money, its a pittance compared to what a Shuttle costs just to launch once, let alone what it costs to build one.

In any case, this is proof that when given the right motivation, the right inspiration Americans can still reach for the stars and indeed may one day actually touch them. Perhaps each one of us will have the opportunity, should we choose, to fly in space within our lives.

The Weapons of Mass Destruction are in Ira...

I think I know where President Bush should be looking for the WMDs he has had so much problem locating in Iraq. In the President's defense, they probably are not far from where he has been looking and I bet if he looks in this new place he will find all the evidence he needs of an advanced nuclear program. Heck the UN has known about it all along... of course they are using underhanded measures to blame the evidence on anyone but Saddam Heussain. Why they are even blaming the Government of Iran. Just because Uranium Enrichment is occuring in Iran that doesn't mean that Saddam wasn't behind it. Of course the UN and the European Union saw that we might see through this so they also managed to get Tehran to admit to their nuclear program. For more details on this insideous plot see the following articles in the NY Times and on CNN's website.

Mmmm.. I suppose it is a little far fetched that the Saddam could presuade his former mortal enemies to harbor his Nuclear program, but then again stranger things have happened such as Saddam working with Bin Laden.. oh wait, that didn't happen either and the President never said it did, nope I read it myself yesterday he never said it, my memory was wrong about that...

In any case, its easy to see how the President's Gang could get confused over where the WMD programs might be. After all.. Iran, Iraq.. they are spelled almost the same and the two countries are right next to each other. Why I bet governments get the two confused all the time. Shoot it happened to the Reagan Administration back in the 80s when we sold the Iranians (who just a few years earlier had held Americans Hostage for more than a year) weapons to help them fight Iraq whom we were reasonably friendly with at the time. I am sure it was all just a simple misunderstanding. Maybe Iran should change its name back to Persia and Iraq back to Babylon so it will make it easier for us to keep them straight.

Ultimately this is the thing, the USA has spent almost two years obsessed with Iraq, and I am sure the Iraqi people will ultimately be better off regardless of who ends up with power than they were under Saddam. That being said, that was not the reason we went into Iraq. Can we honestly say that the two years we have spent on Iraq has done anything to lower the risk of Terrorism? Or to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapon proliferation? During the past two years, Bin Ladden has remained at large, North Korea has almost certainly either developed or expanded its nuclear arsenal and Iran may or may not be working on nuclear weapons of its own. So I would like to borrow and update a phrase that Ronald Reagan used in his 1984 re-election campaign, "Are you safer today than you were 4 years ago?". If you say yes, I am guessing you get your news from the White House or Fox News....

Iraq and Al Quaeda: Linked but not Working Together.

In an example of the double speak that only a politician can master, President Bush today responded to the 9/11 commision's report that while Iraq had some ties to Al Quaeda, there is no evidence they collaborated on the 9/11 attacks or for that matter anything else according to an article in the Washington Times.

For a year and a half the President Bush's White House gang constantly repeated the Mantra of Iraq, Al Quaeda and Weapons of Mass Destruction. The implication seemed pretty clear then and most Americans today still think that one of the reasons for invading Iraq was the imminent hand over of Iraqi weapons of Mass Destruction to Al Quaeda Terrorists. Now mind you the idea that Saddam would hand WMDs to anyone was silly on the face of it. Saddam's number one hobby was protecting Saddam's power. He would never have let weapons out of his control, particularly giving them to those who might one day turn the weapons on him. Well now it turns out that there were no WMD stockpiles (what few weapons we have found seem to be leftovers that escaped the disarming of Iraq in the early 90s), nor was their any real cooperation between Iraq and Al Quaeda.

Of course the President's Gang is now claiming that they never fostered any perception that Saddam and Bin Ladden were working together, merely that there were connections. Of course if we were look, we would probably find similar connections in almost every Arab and Islamic State on the planet. Certainly it seems that members of the Saudi Arabian Royal Family worked as closely if not more closely with Al Quaeda as any of the member of the Iraqi government. Heck, the United States retained ties with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, that did not mean we were collaberating on much of anything.

Its time ultimately for President Bush and indeed all our politicians to admit when they were wrong. Just say it Mr. President, three little words, "I was wrong". Are they that hard? Will the world come tumbling down if you admit that in retrospect, perhaps invading Iraq was not as imperative as you originally thought?

Perhaps if the President would admit he made a mistake people both in the United States and around the world would stop thinking that he is trying to push an agenda that is more for the good of oil companies than it is for the good of either the Iraqi or American people.

Madonna offends yet another religion

Ok, was reading the NY Times today (Story on Madonna) and it turns out that Madonna has decided she has had enough of appropriating Christian and Hindu religous images so she is now going to appropriate Jewish images. Madonna has adopted the name Esther. Now Esther is the name of the Jewish Queen of Xerxes who was a king of Persia (Well Emperor really, but that term wouldn't be invented until the Romans needed a term for someone who was alot like a King, but couldn't be called a King because the Romans hated Kings). There seems to be some doubt if Xerxes ever had a Jewish Queen (Being that outside the Bible there is no evidence she ever existed.. Historians are funny that way; they want proof of someone's existence) but according to the story she saved the Jewish people from an advisor of Xerxes who wanted to destroy them. That being the case, one can see why Esther would be a somewhat popular name among observant Jews.

So Modonna has taken a new name, one of a Jewish heroine. Many cultures have traditions of people adopting new names at different points in their lives. I believe it is or at least was the custom among many Native American Cultures to adopt a new name when when an individual formally reached adulthood. I know it was also was not uncommon among the Samurai of Japan. However, considering that Madonna has typically used religious imagry in her names, perhaps the better analogy is that of Catholic Religious. Amongst many religious orders of monks, nuns and mendicants (mendicants are a little like monks, at least they dress like monks and they pray, otherwise they may or may not be very different from monks depending on the particular order) it is traditional for a person entering an order to take a new name to signify their conversion from their old life to a life following God.

So has Madonna really had a conversion? Well perhaps, she does dress more modestly than she use to... but then again she is getting a little old in a world where the current purveyors of sex in Pop Music are in their late teens and early 20s. And while she might claim that she is following Judaism as far as I can tell she has not formally converted, nor for that matter does she treat the religious symbols of the Jews with what one would consider an abundence of respect. Ultimately it seems the Material Girl is simply materializing religion.

Maybe I am being too hard on Madonna, after all I don't really know what is in her heart or whether she has any sort of true relationship with God. Her history of appropriating religious images though of course does set her up for suspicion. I hope I am wrong.

One last thought, Esther is not only the name of a Jewish heroine, it is also Aramic for Ishtar who was the Babylonian-Assyrian goddess of love, sex, fertility and war. I wonder if Madonna had considered that reference when she chose her Jewish name?