“A man’s rhythm must be interpretive. It will be, therefore in the end, his own, uncounterfeiting, uncounterfeitable.” Ezra Pound. Someone else said “Each line of a poem, however many or few its stresses, represents a single breath, and therefore a single perception.” And “The poet must forge his rhythm according to the impulse of the creative emotion working through him.”
Some outside reading: “Rats Lice and History,” Dr. Hans Zinsser “Post Mortems,” and “Mere Mortals,” Dr. C. MacLaurin. “Anthropology and Primitive Culture,” Sir Edward Taylor “Mind of Primitive Man,” and “Anthropology and Modern Life,” Franz Boas “Early Civilization,” A.A. Goldenweiser “Racial Basis for Civilization,” F.H. Hankins “Wandering of People,” A.C. Haddon.
“To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness To be wounded by my own understanding of love and to bleed willingly and joyfully To wake at dawn with winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy; To return home as eventide with gratitude: and then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in my heart and a song of praise upon my lips.” The Prophet, Gibran
Idea. Idea. Idea. Idea. Idea. Idea. Damn it, none. Pray it through. So near and yet so far. Finders, keepers, losers, weepers.
Political nature abhors a political vacuum. “Cynic: A snarler, a misanthrope. One who believes that human conduct is motivated wholly by self interest. Cynical: Given to contemptuous disbelief in man’s sincerity of motives or rectitude of conduct. Characterized by the conviction that human conduct is suggested or directed by self interest or self indulgence.”
Read more of the following and in a hurry. Emily Dickinson Sidney Lanier William Dean Howells Edward Rowland Sill Stephen Crane Edwin Arlington Robinson Robert Frost Ezra Pound Amy Lowell Wallace Stephens Robinson Jeffers Gertrude Stein T.S. Eliot Hart Crane William Faulkner
Man-environment; Environment-man.
Rip the paper. Go on. Tear it. Leave it lifeless. It’s dead. I have killed it. No one else has. No one else could. It was lifeless anyway, for the moment. For one brief moment I had the audacity, maybe the guts. The courage to transform it, the paper, into a living and monumental entity, is mine for the asking, for the doing. Well, possibly not monumental. That may be going too far. Not monumental to others but to me because it represents something I did, something I feel is more than another person has done. After all, what does another do? In reality, they do nothing. While I attempt to do something I create even if the creation is weak and not as good as something someone else is doing or has done. I, at least, try and don’t sit back to wait for things to happen to me. That would be the easy way, the simple way. It isn’t difficult to be lethargic. I must admit it’s fun. It presents no problems. I can hear the cheers: Way to go! I’ve often thought it the best escape from reality. I sit and wait during a night’s vigil. The world lies before me. I wait for something to happen. It doesn’t. I must make it happen. I must cause the action when the opportunity arises. Arise, opportunity. Please. It’s the only way I have of testing my true nature.
I’m sitting in a bar in Easton where prostitutes were once available to Lafayette College students in the nineteen twenties. My half-full seven-ounce glass of beer is losing its edge. Empty pages in a book, my book, my notebook. Fill the empty pages---for kicks, if for nothing else. It matters little how many words appear as long as some do . . .
I have to start thinking about a job, any job, since it’s work that will put bread in my mouth, food in my belly. Make a list of employment agencies and go begging for work, any kind of work. There are ads for college grads for executive trainees, whatever they are. They want college grads as trainees in sales, advertising, public relations and promotion. There are openings for recent college graduates in television administration. They have ads and ads and ads---for everything, for anything. “Come and register at our agency,” fee paid by the employer. Sometimes I must pay the fee, me. Lose your dignity, my dignity, and line up at the slave auction. Sell your skills, my skills, whatever they are, to the highest bidder. Enter the land of the employed no matter how hopeful, no matter your dreams. Soon you will be in a place where they subjugate the self as an adjunct to the imperial might of corporate America. Shit. But I guess it has to be done if I’m to survive, especially since I don't know what I want to do, what I’ll do, how I’ll do it.
When reading short stories or novels, I usually find women, men, buildings, places, drunks (hard and soft), junkies, scenery, stock characters, some thinking people. Duds, all. Almost. All the fears expressed are the same. All the misgivings are the same. All the worries are the same. Hot dog! Am I reading the right books?
When is this nonsense going to end? There is desire but where is the drive? My drive? Even these notebooks concern me. Sometimes they are silly. Often they are unreadable in the original. I write in them, the scribbling flowing over the lines, the letters crabbed or too large, sometimes smeared with beer or ringed from the wet bottom of a glass. I don’t review what I write to see if they have any strength, if the thoughts make sense. Can the ideas and descriptions that fill these many differently sized sheets be anything more than squiggles of ink on the page. I am most inclined to think the notebooks are useless. Yet they do serve a purpose. They use time and they are good for introspection. They are wonderful for show (and tell), especially around women. The small books work in my favor in bars and mainly in fraternity houses when on the honorable mission of bird-dogging, the surreptitious hunt for another man’s chick. The books help create some suspense in my life. They give me the space to write the many questions I enter each time one comes into my head, drunk or sober. The books enlarge on the mystery I face daily. Lately the notebooks have been taking longer to complete than when I started. Is it because there is less to say? Have I recognized the value of quality over quantity? Is it because I have become lazy or am I too busy with other things, such as comprehensive exams, and I don’t have the time to devote to them? Or is it my slow realization they are truly useless. Is what I write without talent? Are they a waste of time? I suspect this musing is premature. I damn well hope so. I’ll have all summer to see if there is anything inside me worth bringing out. My byword for the moment is time. My by-phrase for the moment is I want to see what happens. Am I anticipating fate? Hoping vainly? Hoping against doom? To an extent, everything plays a part. When any one piece of the puzzle becomes the dominant factor, everything could collapse as evidence of weakness or the self will rise like a totem pole, evidence of untapped power. Son-of-a-bitch. Dance to a different beat. I graduate soon and then I’m off and running. I hope I get my second wind. Easton, Pennsylvania. May 31, 1955. It is 10:30 p.m. Time for another beer and maybe some fried clams. Both will be great for my stomach.
June 1, 1955. Easton, Pennsylvania and Brooklyn. “Modern Man In Search of a Soul,” Carl Jung. “The Rebel,” Albert Camus. Old Testament. Numbers R, XIV, 10.
I graduated from college. My parents and sister were present. Nothing special. I just graduated. No school. No future. My sheepskin is still rolled, tied in a ribbon. No job. Nothing. I now have my degree despite everything. And yes, that includes me. I have a near useless degree in history. Oh yeah. Pack up my bags and head home, home to Brooklyn and the end of everything or the start of something new. But, what? Don’t want to teach. I want to make some money. I want some freedom. I want time to think without external pressures. I’m moving home for the duration because I have no place else to go. I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’m just in a kind of limbo. After a week of doing nothing, I’ll start looking for a job, something, anything, to keep body and soul together until I discover what’s inside me. The graduation was strange. We were all in ill fitting mortarboard flat tops, wrapped in black bird-like cloaks as if we were disguised refugees from a police lineup. I was damn hot. I sweated. My mind wandered and I barely heard my name called to get my diploma. There were the usual pictures. My parents wept as much for themselves as they did for me. Then I changed into real clothing and brought my bags down to the car. We drove home in silence, still unconnected. There was more but that is all I want to say about the day. Perhaps there isn't anything else that warrants comment. Except. Except I managed to escape the campus without saying goodbye to any classmates. I’ll probably never see any of them again and it’s just as well. I doubt any of them will miss me. Most of them had very little to do with my life. Looking at them seated under those crisp blue, cloudless skies, sitting there in static rows, their WASP selves encased in amber, dressed alike, combed and cut alike, smelling alike, thinking alike, it’s no wonder that I had very little to do with them.
Symphonies and poems. All are beautiful. They bring flights of imaginary sounds to me, to you. They bring songs and pictures to me separately. Yet they seem to come together as they twirl their mystic tops, as they spin and spin. Sometimes they spin ferociously. Sometimes their magic spins calmly, almost like invisible spirits. Imagination, mine and that of everyone else, holds important hope for survival in the world. The final hope, though, is still up for grabs.
©2008 Ron Steinman
I can start over. I can build anew, now. I may only be for me. I have no girl, but I will find one---in time. The need is there because women are the greatest tension relievers and sounding boards who ever lived. They are useful and enjoyable, necessary for the house. Here are women at two for a quarter or on any street corner. Take a long look. Don’t touch. Step right up and make your choice. The Last Chance Saloon. Buy a beer. Get entangled with the most electrifying, delectable, enchanting beings ever created--- sponsored by the greatest entrepreneur in existence.
“Go away boy, you bother me.”
The way I think is at times appalling. I should be ashamed of myself. You should be ashamed of yourself, is something my mother would say. But I never feel it for long. A long trip is in order. Where? I’ll be an old man before I finally figure myself out and I wonder if all the time spent will be worth it.
My daddy. My mommy. That’s how they want me to think of them. It’s who and what they are and they can’t forget it, even if I try my hardest to erase them from my life. I’m tired of puppet masters. I must pull my own strings. For once. For all.
In the middle of all my anguish I think about Carole again. What is she doing now? How is she doing it now? I miss her. Someday I may find her again. Maybe I’ll even look for her again. When I’m with her, I love her. When away from her, I miss her and I’m curious how she thinks of me even after seeing her and opening myself wide to her a short time ago. She could be in the arms of another now. Then she would have a hard time remembering me, who I am, who I was to her. I must be getting soft, a sentimentalist, a misplaced romantic. It can’t happen here. That’s what they all say. Who are they? It happened once, twice and if we are lucky it may happen a third time. If we are really lucky it will never happen again.
April 14, 1955. Brooklyn, New York. Two-fifteen in the morning. Another late night. Raw taste of beer. Dead cigarettes inhabit my mouth and throat. Shards of tobacco cling to my teeth. Raw taste of ugly emotion.
April 15, 1955. To write or not to write. Stream of consciousness.
A perplexing question. I write. A penny a word. Payable on demand. Balls.
Words: pleonasas, aulic, propitious, contiguous, tired (how did this get in here?), attrition, palimpsest, said (huh!), declared, stated, jejune, valetudinary, exacerbated. Words, words, words.
“The Company She Keeps.” Mary McCarthy. Should shake them up a bit on campus.
How many days until the end? Definitely not mine. How far can the cable car go without stretching the cable beyond its normal tension point? Torque tension drive cannot go without fuel, some kind of fuel. Is there a proper fuel for discourse drive, for the time-honored so-called treasures of shelled, hollow husks of physical beings, if that’s what we can call ourselves? Easy---nothingness.
Luther. Circular reasoning rarely gets participants into trouble, especially with themselves. Circles are circular and not square and when a man enters one of these geometric sets and closes the door behind him, if things go right, there is little doubt he will end exactly where he started. He will also run into the occasional paradox. That, too, is inevitable. Luther locked the door but by virtue of some very neat logical interpolation, he justified his enclosed, locked-in, swinging self. For the illogical, inconsistent thinker he is, he does an unusually fine job of rationalizing divine law, natural law (Scholastic in theory) and the relationship of the church and state. For me, and this is quite unfair, but I don’t care, my inference is again we are seeing the fallacy of simple logic. After all, I am Jewish and he is only Luther.
Carole answered my letter.
History, said Aristotle, represents things as they are, fiction as they ought to be. Tonight I met a woman who said she was born in a police station at the age of four. I think I heard her right. And if she is right, what then? There is something in that someplace but damned if I know what it is or means.
An idea is forming for something that I’ve wanted to do for some time. One man is talking, remembering, reflecting. Or he is reliving the experience in his mind. No. He is not, I think. Not exactly reliving but close to reality or as close as he wants to get. It is difficult for me to formulate the idea. I am tired. I need sleep. I can’t write now. I don’t want to write now. If I write, I will miss my badly needed sleep. The coming weekend might tell part of the story. What story? In truth, it is not the whole story. In reality I haven’t done anything yet to have proven myself. That will wait. Meanwhile, I’ll have to try to work out the ideas floating in my head. This is an important pursuit of mine. Work on history as I have been doing. Time is drawing near. Try to read what is really important. But isn’t it all important? Discipline is most important.
I wonder how Carole will answer my last letter? It seems I’m always wondering what women will say to me in their letters. Usually they give up on me, figuring something is wrong with me. Or they don’t answer me at all. Some fun. It’s interesting, though, how women, the majority, do not really understand what I say. Or why. They can’t be all that stupid or am I so far above them? Am I? Nah. That can’t be it either. What is it? Am I the bad risk my parents believe? Yeah. I guess that’s it. My arms hurt. I’m, sleepy.
They all look alike, every one of them. There is not one bit of difference between them. Look at them hard. Look at them carefully. Hey, just look. They walk. They swing their arms. They move their feet. They swing back and forth, a step forward, always forward. When they run away from you, they continue to move forward. Faster.
Hey, wait for me. Where you going, huh? Geez, I don’t know but come away with me anyway. We may find out a thing or two.
They went. I watched them go. They are two halves of a whole. One not knowing the other and the other half knowing, which isn’t really anything like the sum of its parts “knowing.” They went: side by side, forward, forward. Always forward. Never backward. Restless. The two always are moving ahead. A straight line.
Are we almost there?
No. We are not.
Are we half way there?
No.
Then where the hell are we?
I’m tired. The journey is too much, too rushed. Please tell me where we are.
I don’t know. I really don’t but, you know, you know I wish you knew. Let’s continue. We must go forward.
Turn your back on the others and lets get our asses out of here.
On the BMT Brighton line to 42nd Street. I’m going out to play alone fortified by six glasses of beer. Schaeffer is on tap.
Four girls sitting together on the subway, huddled against the varnished wicker seats. They can say more about nothing than one hundred men---at least, from the point of view of one hundred men. They talk. Ultimately they walk and that is good to watch. Still they say nothing, or nothing I can hear them saying. Happy little useful creatures how I wish you were only more so, plus or minus. Four must be a female number. They move with each other tonight. They hold only to each other tightly for fear if they move or separate from each other they will perish from this earth. Clinging vines. Old and new wine. Seething teeth. Huge sides of beef. Coral reef.
Club Metronome at 52nd Street and 7th Avenue. Swinging people, what there is of them. Place is mostly empty but the people at the bar are okay. All of them are at ease, at least on the outside. Hope they make it whatever they do, whatever they are up to. The stage is small. The acoustics are poor. Yeah. Joe DeRies swings as does Vickie Carrol. Don’t press for drinks, I tell myself, because I will soon run out of money. Nurse your beer. Dashes, not words, fill the lines.
Later. What do I know best? Good question because it immediately asks what do I know at all, of anything, of nothing, of something? For my purposes, all for the moment will be the same. I will weed this out another time.
Middle class money. Middle class ethics. Jewish home. Jewish family. Anti-Semitism. Conservative home thus begets conservative parents. Sports. Street sports. Roller hockey. Stick ball. Brooklyn---When growing up---the neighborhood, the streets. Brooklyn---The kids. Brooklyn---The Bigger Kids. The block bully. Trial. Error. Drink. Confusion. A whore.
Balls. That lousy drunk finally catches up with me after being on my tail for about six or seven blocks. Man, let me tell you, he is one cat I just do not want to have anything to with, ever. It is a drag, like really obnoxious. Sickening. If he ever changes his clothing, even takes a bath, he will become a candidate for a presidential citation from that dame in Washington who runs the Health Department. I feel a saint compared to him. Of all the bums to discover me, he is the worst. He smells like horses. He must have been sleeping in the stables at Prospect Park and Caton, near a rare traffic circle in Brooklyn.
Clash of values. Father and Son. Conservative middle class father. Arguments that never end. Quiet mother who says nothing. Everything implied. Suppressing violent emotions. Son striving for independence. Father stuck in a rut. In the past. Clash, clash, clash. Old world and new world. But old world is not old in reality. It is old world, as derived from old European world. Father says, son do this. Son says, yes. Then, pop! Son decides he wants to do what he wants. His life. Hell with others. Son remains tied to parents and past because they are his endowment. They are deep inside him. There is little he can do to exorcize them. So there it is, the basic conflict between parents and parents, and between son and son. Within themselves. Within himself. Now the problem is how to resolve the question. Introspection plays a major part in the confrontation. Son is at a point where he is the only one who can help himself. He becomes reconciled to his fate. In any event, he decides to sever diplomatic relations at home and take off to foreign points, points unknown, or something. No longer is he facing a decision about the basic issue causing the split with his parents. School? Choice of profession? It is tied with elementary middle class Jewish psychology, strangling him slowly. Change is sudden but it has been building for many years. Son doesn’t think clearly how to tell his parents of his apparent, sudden change. He has to approach them carefully and gently but he doesn’t know how to handle them when he does finally face them. He blurts everything in haste, anger and confusion. Shock on part of parents follows. Argument follows shock. There is no meeting of minds. Emotions and perceptions are too far apart. For the moment, the son is also confused, bewildered, bitter, cynical, skeptical. Wildly so. A young man who believes he is wise in certain ways, doubtful in many others, puzzled with most of what he faces. He is fighting everything: society, his friends, girls, his parents mainly, and above all, himself. After all this, the least I can do is send a Mother’s Day card. Jeezuz.
The street. My street. Streets I grew up on. I walk alone. Abandoned objects are on the street. There are too many things on the street that affect me, the walker. Dirt theme. Impassive. Unmoving. Embodiment of static, of non-dynamic, anti-intellectualism. Pound. Pound. Glorify it. Wind blowing all the garbage. Heavy feet, light feet. Light head---whore for all, mistress of none.
Magnificent. It knows of all things, yet allows no one to know it. Subjected to everything, yet it doesn’t allow others to know anything. It always remains emotionally the same yet it changes continuously, but only in a physical sense. People move over it, walking, crawling, running --- over it. The street can care less. It’s the only real unity of life. It’s not in the Dark Ages but it may be Medieval because it’s static, it’s in chains. It has no desire for change but we change it anyway. Progress goes on and it remains emotionally the same. Life rises and falls around it, on it. Wine runs in its gutters. Our blood is heavily cast on it, over it, staining it permanently. Marching feet pass over it, forever. The street has one name, sometimes many names, names created over time, some political, others frivolous. Everyone wants control over it. It wants control over nothing. We use it without permission. Those with passports need not apply. It looks askance at the user. Man cannot alter its foundation, weather and time withstanding. It’s the sounding board for everyone. All desecrate it. It has no respect from anyone. It does nothing, accepting all comers playing the role of a loyal servant forever in bondage. The great and not so great have walked on it and over it. It’s faithful to each of its owners in turn. Rarely is it worshiped. Consecrating it would be the epitome of all man’s striving. The crowning achievement. The end of all life, love, happiness. It takes everything in its stride. The trials it has withstood would have been enough to destroy any mortal, any being, anything in creation. It has managed to survive, ready to receive the vicissitudes of life, death, destruction, struggle passion, and red, red, wine. The street never forgets when the wine flowed, when heads rolled, when. . .
May 10, 1955. Easton, Pennsylvania, 11:35 p.m. Why must mysteries always seem to plague me? Is it because I question and therefore invite problems which must fall in the category of the mystery because they remain unanswered? That must be it. Because of my concern, I put myself into situations that perplex me. Perhaps I would be better off if I didn’t think of those matters that could and do generate problems. If I were a mechanic, a laborer, any man who works with his hands instead of his head, I would not have a life that would lead me to my place in the universe. I don’t have the answer why this is important to me, why I have to discover what that spot is and where it can be found. It’a important. Everything that I do centers on me. Is that wrong? Where? Why? When? How? Etc. I’m upset because I never come up with an answer. Sometimes I think I have the answer. Sometimes I think the answer will be found in others. If so, I would then be prepared to accept their theory. What will happen when a new generation evolves? I can’t believe the new generation or even parts of it will ingest the past. It will go seeking in its own way, trying to fathom its place in this, our expanding universe.
The question of place, of position, seems possible only for those who embrace religion, philosophy (either political or spiritual) or some form of physical escape that often includes self abuse. All, in their own way, are mental crutches. Don’t accept anything too profound. Don’t be too concerned with another’s plight. Don’t give a damn. I can’t be that way. I’m still looking and I’m still unsatisfied with what I see, including what’s inside me. I’m still trying for the brass ring. Maybe I’ll never capture it like other people. Possibly it’s my destiny to search forever, to never solve the mystery of why, when, where and how. Somehow the simple things also count and my goal may ultimately be found in love. Simple/complex.
May 11, 1955. It shall come out of thin air. (Sounds like H.G. Wells.) Let it flow for itself. (Sounds like a musician on pot.) Let it bring forth anything that is present and alive in the innermost portals of my immature mind. Flow, damn, flow.
Contrast between something untouched and something touched.
Trying to do a story on someone I know. Explain to him that some ideas come from him but it’s really not about him. Who, then? A man has immersed himself in fear, too deeply in self, in conceit and distrust. Tell him that a good part of the situation stems from him and from others in the same position. It doesn’t reflect on his reality because it’s something that I can only guess. It’s also as much about me as it’s about him, about anyone. Finally, it’s about a search for place, for peace, for truth. ©2008 Ron Steinman
Editor's note: the following is excerpted information from the news release for Leica's much anticipated upgrade to their M8 digital rangefinder camera.
The new LEICA M8.2 integrates a new extra-quiet, low-vibration metal blade focal plane shutter which allows the photographer to determine the right moment for cocking. This addition brings the digital LEICA M8.2 extremely close to the ideal of the famous rubber cloth focal plane shutter of its analog sisters. Responding to the request of many professional photographers, the new model has been given an even more inconspicuous design: the Leica dot and the accessory shoe now blend in with the color of the camera. The black version of the camera boasts a new extra durable high-quality deep black finish. The new snapshot mode will appeal to all who want exceptional results immediately without having a vast knowledge about photography. If the shutter speed dial is turned to the new “S“ setting, the camera controls all the key features automatically, such as automatic exposure (aperture priority), automatic ISO speed setting and automatic white balance. For the three most commonly used subject modes, the LEICA M8.2 gives suggestions on aperture and focus settings, which can be seen when the “INFO” button on the camera monitor is pressed. Portable information can be found on the new brief waterproof instructions which can be folded to the size of a credit card. The automatic ISO setting can be selected in all operation modes of the LEICA M8.2. Another new feature is a quick override setting: When the shutter release button is sustained as far as the first pressure point, a correction of +/- 3 stops in 1/3 steps can be made with the dial on the back of the camera. The setting is shown in the viewfinder. Further modifications include a more pronounced detent mechanism of the main switch of the camera to prevent inadvertent activation of the self-timer, and redesign of the bright line frames in the viewfinder to allow more precise determination of the picture frame for longer distances. The new LEICA M8.2 is the first professional digital camera to use an ultra scratch-resistant sapphire crystal as coverglass for the camera monitor. It is so hard that it is repaired exclusively with special diamond tools and is permanently resistant to all mechanical or abrasive stress. The camera also has a new easy-grip and specially robust “vulcanite“ finish. The new compact charger unit is designed to take up a minimum of space in the photograper’s bag, and charges the lithium ion battery to 80% in only an hour and a half. This is sufficient for an average of 400 exposures, so that recharging the camera in a very short time is possible, especially when the full 500 exposures is not utilized. The new LEICA M8.2 has inherited the superior image quality of the LEICA M8, resulting from the combination of the legendary M lenses with a CCD image sensor specially designed for the requirements of the Leica M system and high-performance image processing. The new Capture One 4 raw data converter of the Danish manufacturer Phase One ensures the best possible picture quality in the camera’s DNG mode. Unlike any other digital camera, the LEICA M8.2 is compatible with almost all Leica M system lenses produced since 1954 due to their high standard of performance. Like its predecessors, the new LEICA M8.2 continues in the tradition of easy operation, concentration on the essential, few controls and logical, easy-to-follow menus. The LEICA M8 launched in the fall of 2006 is still available as an alternative to the new LEICA M8.2. Following a tradition of the Leica company that is unique in the world of digital photography, many elements of the new LEICA M8.2 can even be integrated into the LEICA M8: the shutter, the sapphire coverglass or the new viewfinder frames can be retrofitted by Customer Service.
Drew Carey takes us on a guided tour of Second Life (SL), a virtual world with more than 500,000 residents. This short documentary was produced by Paul Feine and edited by The Digital Filmmaker's Roger M. Richards.
SL isn’t your typical virtual world. Unlike other popular massively multiplayer online role-playing games, like EverQuest and World of Warcraft, there are no defined roles or objectives in SL. Just like in real life, SL residents determine their own goals and decide for themselves how best to achieve them. Moreover, virtually everything in SL was created by the residents themselves using tools provided by Linden Lab, the company that launched SL in 2003.
SL is based on a simple set of institutional arrangements that would make F.A. Hayek proud. In essence, the people who own the property in SL make the rules. The result is a spontaneously ordered world in which residents are free to fly, teleport, build, trade and interact with others without interference from the state.
Recently, Linden Lab—the SL equivalent of a state—has begun acting more and more like a real life government by restricting activities such as gambling. But open source competitors based on the SL platform are currently in development. so better virtual worlds offering even more freedom are just around the corner.
CNN's Paula Hancocks meets Israel's blind photographers. Interesting report. A few years ago in Cali, Colombia I was teaching a workshop on photojournalism at the main daily newspaper in that troubled city. Those were the days when the Cali drug cartel controlled the narcotics trade and virtually ran things in Cali. One of the photographers, who was blind in one eye, taught me a lesson about courage and perseverance. -Roger Richards
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