Tag: Ron Paul

Tears for Connecticut

If this blog were written in ink, it would be blotted with tears.

The photo of a school parent on cell  phone crying says it all.

Tears over wireless. Tears over space. Heck, I am in Vietnam, and won’t be back after Christmas. But I feel the pinch, the lump in the throat (try to listen to Tears in Heaven, by Eric Clapton, while advancing the slides about Newtown memorial service).

Who is to be blamed? God? Gun? or (lack of ) Gut?

The First Lady has been hard at work to improve school lunch (healthier menu). She got some opposition there (how hard is it to add yogurt and sliced apple to the institutional menu? Just outsource to McDonald).

Now, the job is not to add fresh fruit to the school. It’s to take the guns out of it.

The upcoming battle in America is not from outside. It’s right there from within.

Hollywood has taken the path of least resistance (sex + violence =  high revenue).

Porn sites were even lazier (just upload and watch your own).

Moralists are definitely not listened to (Cultural Literacy recommends the public to read Chaucer etc…) since they are way out of touch with mainstream conversation.

That leaves the World Wild West unfiltered.

In Back to Blood, Tom Wolfe painted an America of the future, with setting in Miami (giant projected porn flick on sail boats).

Each President got a four-year term, or 8 years max. Policies and politics don’t take the long view. They can not.

Career officers, of course, just do their jobs (until it changes again).

Meanwhile, no single person, well-meaning or not, can affect the outcome of the country. It’s natural selection. It always has been since its founding.

Checks and bounces. On the other hand, it’s this and that. When in doubt, we debate. Once in a while, we listen to Ron Paul, at least, out of courtesy, since it was his last speech before Congress.

But then, we move on. Short-term amnesia. Until the next tragedy. Aurora seems so far away. Now, it’s Newtown, Connecticut. Then, who could pro-actively prevent Newton, Mass? Wipe those tears away. Then, stand up. (as of this edit, there was a similar tragedy averted in Central FL University).

Those gun laws were written in their times within the agrarian Frontier contexts. Take the meaning, reframe it in new context. Yes, there are timeless stuff (right to privacy, right to self-defense and freedom of expression; all the good stuff that makes America what it is, a magnet to the world’s braves), but then, would you, as an Iraqi refugee, an Egyptian businessman, a French chef and Australian educator, think twice about coming to America, risking everything, including the young lives of your children? It makes for poor image as world’s leader.

(You) Tube and Toast

The English had their toasts (toasters) thanks to electricity. I’ve got my music thanks to Youtube. Each generation tries to outdo the previous one. My daughters would read about Mars, not Moon (I blogged about the excitement of waiting in line for hours to see that rock brought back from the Moon).

Thanks YouTube. The three founders I believe who invented this medium.

It brought together a platform made possible by broadband and algorithm (perhaps you might like to listen to this…..).

Don’t give up on us baby, then If you leave me now, or Adieu Sois Heureuse.

“Lord knows we’ve come this far”

“We went too far to leave it all behind”.

Innovators, don’t give up. Lord knows we have gone this far. We can’t change the way we are.

Push forward.

Science at the forefront of change.

Let’s tweet again.

Politician and musician will follow suit.

As long as scientists and technologists don’t give up.

I know you are more intimate with your sleeping bags than your spouses.

But for generations to come, you have us forever grateful to your “prototypes”.

A VoIP call, a clip we share, a link we paste.

How can this be?

I started out my Telecom career throwing a tin can with string attached across the alley to my neighbor’s house.

Despite the heavy rain, we communicated without shouting.

But it was “wire line” then. It’s wireless now. And not just voice. It’s the apps era.

Here or To Go?

When we grew up in Vietnam, at the height of the war, we stuck our noses into our neighbor’s window to catch a glimpse of Vic Morrow‘s Combat, or Wild Wild West. Large crowd, small screen.

Now I see small kids, watching large screens.

The time, they are a’changin, as Dylan would say.

To close this blog, I want to draw our attention to a very controversial character: Insull, who died in a Paris metro with a ticket in his hand.

Insull would make the Ebbers of the world look like they are from Junior League.

Insull left behind the electricity meters and business model we see today.

It made possible the electrifying of the English toasters and todays’ Youtube.

Insull rode the ups and downs of an entrepreneur life. And he died riding the subway in Paris a homeless and wretched man. But Don’t give up on us Baby.

We have come thus far, can’t we stay the way we are.

We have come too far to leave all this behind.

I enjoyed my toast and tube this morning. Feel like a million-dollars.

Thanks to those guys that went before me. On shoulders of giants we stand, we sing and we soar.

(You)tube and toast. Let’s toast to the spirit of innovation and creativity.

Think of something new and bigger than yourself today. Even the moonlight.

Before the ground claims us all to itself. Vic Morrow has died, in accident, and not in Combat. The  point is, fight for every inch against complacency. Read Ron Paul‘s parting message. Appreciate the liberty we are given to pursue dreams and discovery. I have blogged about the payload. All into it, except for those outliers. Then the world will join you .. the way they are hunting for an I-phone 5. VoIP, data and video, on the go. Beautiful apps, wonderful world we are living in.

In defense of one’s time

After all, it’s your time, your narrative and your unrealized dreams.

You and I must take ownership of this. And not hesitate to come to its defense.

Whether it’s hard rock or soft rock (Seger finally went digital), hardback or paperback, boom box or boomers, software or soft drinks.

We had no other choice (from my vantage point, we used to laugh at silent movies, showing people  holding up the ear-piece when answering the telephone – Charlie Chaplin style).

Yesterday’s  music has become today’s Muzak (the Beatles in symphony heard in doctor’s waiting room).

Hard Rock is now a Cafe and Casino.

Harley can seat two comfortably.

And the U2 will give a concert on Yahoo celebrating Clinton’s 65th birthday (Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow).

Inaugural Balls from Carter to Clinton  had a spike in between thanks to the show-biz excess during the 80’s ( astrological charts were consulted before there was Windows Calendar).

I graduated when the country swung to the far Right (remember the AID’s scare, so “girls just wanna have fun”)

with nuclear annihilation a real possibility. The trickle-down economy did not trickle down to me. Instead, it drove inflation all the way to this day.

A lot of senseless shootings (JL and Brady). A lot of tele-evangelists got rich quick and went down quick (could have been quicker in the age of Twitter and Wikileaks).

My Dad came over in the mid 80’s, and lived the rest of his life in the NorthEast.

Toward the end, he got tears in his eyes when I suggested that he accompany me on a trip back home. “Too old, too weak,” he said.

No more in defense of his time. Just a slow surrender to institutional inertia (nursing home), gravity and fate.

Somewhere in this decade, we will see  a surge in Baby Boomers‘ revival, not so much in Burning Man’s style, but in giving, cruising or traveling (Clinton vs Clinton).

They all read up on CEO Ray Anderson, champion of sustainability in business, who had just died. They all knew “the good died young”. So they party on

and stop thinking about tomorrow.

Flowers children turned flower (senior) citizens (The Playboy Club, Pan Am).

Every face in the NYT obituary is now recognizable while every face in the presidential debate unrecognizable (even the familiar Lehrer has now retired). Names of  far-away war (Kabul) now replace forgotten ones (Hue). I spent a night in the basement of Henry C Lodge’s house. And that was  a highlight (according to Jackie’s oral archive, Kennedy appointed his Republican opponent to take charge of a conceivably unwinnable war.)

It’s time to tell the story in defense of our time.  Transitioning from performing to directing, the mother of self-reinvention, Madonna, took up her place behind the camera to follow in the footsteps of  Clint Eastwood  and  Jodie Foster).

We will need a host of Oliver Stone, not Oliver North to reframe our narrative.

Story of a lifetime, of our time, of living in a place where there are so much, yet still much to be done (poverty rates on the rise here in the heartland). We can limit the tweet, but then they retweet. Facing engineered scarcity, society ends up wanting more (bandwith) to tweet and shout (even in conflict, the two sides in Kabul now use Twitter the way the red phone once was in the White House).

It’s not 9/12 that we are facing. It’s 2012, the year of fear.

It’s almost like the Mayan scare, that our best time had already been behind us. If anything, it puts pressure on us and forces us to be mindful (that other great civilizations had already succumbed to ruin). They said when you jump, it gets faster as you drop nearer to the ground. We who are older are cast as wise men, whether we like it or not. It’s been a set pattern, hand-me-down from time eternal. Wise because of forced choices ( and of short time that remains).

I wish I had the vantage point of  a supernova, to see our short span here on Earth. Our time in the context of sweeping light years would count for much less (each life would have an equivalence of a mere short tweet).  But, then, each life is ” a wonderful life”, for at one point or another, we have given and received, intersected and influenced others’, blessed and cursed, but always forward. This makes story telling in our time all the more urgent. Yesterday we laughed at silent movies (Chaplin), today, even DVD format seems obsolete (HD?). The audience now demands to see the story in 3-D and to talk on the phone hands-free. Nothing is wrong with Progress, except for its planned obsolescence. Certainly its clock doesn’t seem to be in sync with ours.  As someone aptly puts it ” the more things stay the same, the more they will have to change.”