Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Earth2100 -- A Pre Mortem



I've always regarded plausible disaster scenarios with the same blank check that the rubber-necking commuter cashes in at a roadside accordion pile-on.Whether I stared blankly into the infected futures in the fire bursts from 'The War Game' or the stillbirth of the bitten umbilical chord in 'Threads' I've never been able to look away from a fathomable end game on earth.

And while nuclear annihilation was the rockiest slope down the certain doom gateway environmental disasters lulled me into a catatonic fascination in our future blind dates with the destiny we have coming to us. (Gee, that sounds more like Pat Robertson indicting a very different form of denial of service).

Earlier this month ABC News aired Earth2100. The producers played the apocalypse slow dance card, casting climate change in the starring role of why this new century could well prove to be the last one for civilization -- both as we know it and as we would come to accept it as). Most of the push back was that it was too negative to set a plausible series of events in motion. The scenario caved under the weight of too many improbabilities. Staggering to another June 2009 station break didn't help the credulity factor. Whatever happened to a commercial-free peak at unsustainable enterprises?

What spooked me the most was how unspectacular the unraveling was -- no special effects and shock factor inventions like suicidal pacts among rapture-starving fundamentalists or power-mad puppeteers that ready, launch, aim. Most of the drumbeats were ominous for their present day familiarity: pandemics, border riots, coastal flooding, acute water shortages, and endless gas lines? Not exactly "out there" prognostications when conjuring up what an accumulation of earthly debts will do to the worldly aspirations of an overgrown human population.

The most novel accessories to heeded warnings include a splash of bio-engineering to re-crown the soggy ice caps and a fortress of ocean-borne levies to guard New York City against the tidal stampede of runaway sea levels. The machinery jams much like the history we're doomed to repeat from Katrina (FEMA trailers a distant reminder of how good we had it when the century was young). The flooding sea produces the perfect cocktail storm, unleashing the plague to end all body counts. The grid fizzles. Frequencies die. There's no social future left to shape or future to imagine.

For me the most poignant aspect to this was the broadcast date of June 2 -- the birth date of Lucy whose biography spans the final century ahead. She is the tribal elder of 2100 and has a proud personal history that scales her grief to an epic and collapsible dimension that transcends any boundaries still standing. It is also the birth date of my late grandfather Robert Pollan who was born on June 2, 1906. I'm grateful there is something of Popa I still have the opportunity to teach and it's a lesson that can never be over taught and runs the constant risk of being undervalued:

* Treat people as their own person where they make the difference (not their breeding, gonads, hair size, or facial markings).

* Avoid at all cost the exclamatory stain of "you, your, them, or those ... people."

* Use the pattern-matching attributes of grouping humans as a way to show others how they stand out in ways that will help their communities.

These are values that endure any worst case scenario or the perverse fascination with their invention.

Earth2100 -- A Pre Mortem



I've always regarded plausible disaster scenarios with the same blank check that the rubber-necking commuter cashes in at a roadside accordion pile-on.Whether I stared blankly into the infected futures in the fire bursts from 'The War Game' or the stillbirth of the bitten umbilical chord in 'Threads' I've never been able to look away from a fathomable end game on earth.

And while nuclear annihilation was the rockiest slope down the certain doom gateway environmental disasters lulled me into a catatonic fascination in our future blind dates with the destiny we have coming to us. (Gee, that sounds more like Pat Robertson indicting a very different form of denial of service).

Earlier this month ABC News aired Earth2100. The producers played the apocalypse slow dance card, casting climate change in the starring role of why this new century could well prove to be the last one for civilization -- both as we know it and as we would come to accept it as). Most of the push back was that it was too negative to set a plausible series of events in motion. The scenario caved under the weight of too many improbabilities. Staggering to another June 2009 station break didn't help the credulity factor. Whatever happened to a commercial-free peak at unsustainable enterprises?

What spooked me the most was how unspectacular the unraveling was -- no special effects and shock factor inventions like suicidal pacts among rapture-starving fundamentalists or power-mad puppeteers that ready, launch, aim. Most of the drumbeats were ominous for their present day familiarity: pandemics, border riots, coastal flooding, acute water shortages, and endless gas lines? Not exactly "out there" prognostications when conjuring up what an accumulation of earthly debts will do to the worldly aspirations of an overgrown human population.

The most novel accessories to heeded warnings include a splash of bio-engineering to re-crown the soggy ice caps and a fortress of ocean-borne levies to guard New York City against the tidal stampede of runaway sea levels. The machinery jams much like the history we're doomed to repeat from Katrina (FEMA trailers a distant reminder of how good we had it when the century was young). The flooding sea produces the perfect cocktail storm, unleashing the plague to end all body counts. The grid fizzles. Frequencies die. There's no social future left to shape or future to imagine.

For me the most poignant aspect to this was the broadcast date of June 2 -- the birth date of Lucy whose biography spans the final century ahead. She is the tribal elder of 2100 and has a proud personal history that scales her grief to an epic and collapsible dimension that transcends any boundaries still standing. It is also the birth date of my late grandfather Robert Pollan who was born on June 2, 1906. I'm grateful there is something of Popa I still have the opportunity to teach and it's a lesson that can never be over taught and runs the constant risk of being undervalued:

* Treat people as their own person where they make the difference (not their breeding, gonads, hair size, or facial markings).

* Avoid at all cost the exclamatory stain of "you, your, them, or those ... people."

* Use the pattern-matching attributes of grouping humans as a way to show others how they stand out in ways that will help their communities.

These are values that endure any worst case scenario or the perverse fascination with their invention.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Where There's a Wil There's a .Wav

This just in from the prolific Fab Four archivist Wil Montgomery* of Bobolink Lane in leafy suburban Milwaukee -- a recipe for transferring videos to MP3s. In lay geek terms what kind of transformation are we talking about? Wil is addressing how to make an *.mp3 from a Youtube *.flv file ("flash video) or *.swf file (shockwave file).

The process has all the vicarious thrills of flying the good housekeeping seal over a pirated ship in choppy commercial waters.

Simple:


  1. Right click Internet Explorer Icon

  2. Choose: Internet properties

  3. Select Settings

  4. Select View Files

  5. Click on column to sort by last accessed

  6. There is the last file viewed on Youtube (usually 3-20 MB)

  7. Drag that file to your music folder (if it is not *.flv file type, add that to the end of file name)

Last but not least:

  1. Get a free "FLV file converter" from download.com
  2. Use it on the file to convert to *.avi or *.mpeg
  3. Get a music editor
  4. Strip out the audio ** This happens automatically when file is loaded into to the music editor. Wil endorses Magix Music Editor
  5. Save as *mp3
  6. Transfer to your player

Pictured: Free flv converter

------------------------------------

* Not Wil M. of the Alabama Beekeeepers Association

Where There's a Wil There's a .Wav

This just in from the prolific Fab Four archivist Wil Montgomery* of Bobolink Lane in leafy suburban Milwaukee -- a recipe for transferring videos to MP3s. In lay geek terms what kind of transformation are we talking about? Wil is addressing how to make an *.mp3 from a Youtube *.flv file ("flash video) or *.swf file (shockwave file).

The process has all the vicarious thrills of flying the good housekeeping seal over a pirated ship in choppy commercial waters.

Simple:


  1. Right click Internet Explorer Icon

  2. Choose: Internet properties

  3. Select Settings

  4. Select View Files

  5. Click on column to sort by last accessed

  6. There is the last file viewed on Youtube (usually 3-20 MB)

  7. Drag that file to your music folder (if it is not *.flv file type, add that to the end of file name)

Last but not least:

  1. Get a free "FLV file converter" from download.com
  2. Use it on the file to convert to *.avi or *.mpeg
  3. Get a music editor
  4. Strip out the audio ** This happens automatically when file is loaded into to the music editor. Wil endorses Magix Music Editor
  5. Save as *mp3
  6. Transfer to your player

Pictured: Free flv converter

------------------------------------

* Not Wil M. of the Alabama Beekeeepers Association

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attentionSpin is a consulting practice formed in 1990 to create, automate and apply a universal scoring system (“The Biggest Picture”) to brands, celebrities, events and policy issues in the public eye. In the Biggest Picture, attentionSpin applies the principles of market research to the process of media analytics to score the volume and nature of media coverage. The explanatory power of this research model: 1. Allows practitioners to understand the requirements for managing the quality of attention they receive 2. Shows influencers the level of authority they hold in forums where companies, office-seekers, celebrities and experts sell their visions, opinions and skills 3. Creates meaningful standards for measuring the success and failure of campaigns and their connection to marketable assets.