http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2012/12/22/open-line-the-bird-is-the-word Comments On: Open line: The bird is the word by Max Brantley en-us Copyright 2013 Arkansas Times. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, Arkansas Times readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact Arkansas Times. robert@arktimes.com (Arkansas Times Webmaster) Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:01 -0500 Sat, 18 May 2013 18:00:00 -0500 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss "I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.""

Hey, don't sell old HAL short. He was part of a master plan to save mankind. Arthur C. Clarke wrote 3 sequels to 2001. In 2010, HAL was apparently lost when Jupiter changed into another sun. But he returned from the dead somehow (I don't remember how, perhaps a backup). Finally, in 3001, HAL purposely sacrificed himself (no backups) for mankind. He died that we might live. This was a TRUE sacrifice too. He was not resurrected in 3 days nor were there any threats to come back to judge the quick and the dead. HAL is (or will be in 3001) a true hero.
Posted by Olphart]]> Sun, 23 Dec 2012 16:15:22 -0600 Arkansas Times
If you, HAL, respond as follows, I will become quite worried:
"I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you."
Posted by YossarianMinderbinder]]> Sun, 23 Dec 2012 01:43:26 -0600 Arkansas Times
For example, enterprenuers are leaping on education like vultures on a carcass looking to replace it with highly profitable education-by-computer. They are promoted by evangelical cybertheorists.
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Steven Poole in www.newstatesman.com is on a rant about cybertheorists. "Cybertheorists’ jargon often betrays an adolescent hatred of the world in which they find themselves."

They preach a doctrine of creative destruction but embellish the creative and downplay the destruction.

"... there is a dark side to this friend… it creates a culture without a moral foundation. It undermines certain mental processes and social relations that make human life worth living. Technology, in sum, is both friend and enemy."

"Jay Rosen, a prominent “future of news” cyber-guru, takes care at every opportunity to sneer at publishing institutions by pasting to them the epithet “legacy”: “legacy newsrooms”, “legacy media”. Another favourite cyber-adjective is “disruptive”. For most of us, disruption is annoying, but for cyber-swamis the more disruptive of established practices technology becomes, the more exciting it is."

"The cyber-credo of “open” sounds so liberal and friendly that it is easy to miss its remarkable hypocrisy. “Open-source” software, on the model of the Linux operating system, used to be the cyber-theorists’ favourite example of why open would always beat closed."

"The big technology companies that are the cybertheorists’ beloved exemplars of the coming world order are anything but open. Google doesn’t publish its search algorithm; Apple is notoriously secretive about its product plans; Facebook routinely changes its users’ privacy options. Apple, Google and Amazon are all frantically building proprietary “walled-garden” content utopias for profit."
http://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/inter…
----
John Naughton at http://www.guardian.co.uk describes Poole's rant: "Over at the New Statesman, Steven Poole is Mad as Hell. Like Howard Beale in the film Network, he's Not Going to Take It Any More."

Why don't we discuss the ignored minuses of the digital remake of society?

"One answer, suggested many years ago by the great cultural critic Neil Postman is that we live in what he called a "technopoly", that is to say a society in which technology is effectively deified."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/…
----
In an earlier rant Steven Poole did a stomping of pseudoscience:
" This is the plague of neuroscientism – aka neurobabble, neurobollocks, or neurotrash – and it’s everywhere."
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/…
A snippet from that article:
"Cyber-thinkers have run with the wisdom-of-crowds notion to a place that bears little resemblance to reality as we know it, high-fiving each other among the rubble of reason in a fatuous kind of hi-tech, misanthropic herd-worship."

Before anyone else points out the disharmony of excoriating technology when the text is in pixels rather than ink ... noted.
Posted by YossarianMinderbinder]]> Sun, 23 Dec 2012 01:26:43 -0600 Arkansas Times
For example, enterprenuers are leaping on education like vultures on a carcass looking to replace it with highly profitable education-by-computer. They are promoted by evangelical cybertheorists.
----
Steven Poole in www.newstatesman.com is on a rant about cybertheorists. "Cybertheorists’ jargon often betrays an adolescent hatred of the world in which they find themselves."

They preach a doctrine of creative destruction but embellish the creative and downplay the destruction.

"... there is a dark side to this friend… it creates a culture without a moral foundation. It undermines certain mental processes and social relations that make human life worth living. Technology, in sum, is both friend and enemy."

"Jay Rosen, a prominent “future of news” cyber-guru, takes care at every opportunity to sneer at publishing institutions by pasting to them the epithet “legacy”: “legacy newsrooms”, “legacy media”. Another favourite cyber-adjective is “disruptive”. For most of us, disruption is annoying, but for cyber-swamis the more disruptive of established practices technology becomes, the more exciting it is."

"The cyber-credo of “open” sounds so liberal and friendly that it is easy to miss its remarkable hypocrisy. “Open-source” software, on the model of the Linux operating system, used to be the cyber-theorists’ favourite example of why open would always beat closed."

"The big technology companies that are the cybertheorists’ beloved exemplars of the coming world order are anything but open. Google doesn’t publish its search algorithm; Apple is notoriously secretive about its product plans; Facebook routinely changes its users’ privacy options. Apple, Google and Amazon are all frantically building proprietary “walled-garden” content utopias for profit."
http://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/inter…
----
John Naughton at http://www.guardian.co.uk describes Poole's rant: "Over at the New Statesman, Steven Poole is Mad as Hell. Like Howard Beale in the film Network, he's Not Going to Take It Any More."

Why don't we discuss the ignored minuses of the digital remake of society?

"One answer, suggested many years ago by the great cultural critic Neil Postman is that we live in what he called a "technopoly", that is to say a society in which technology is effectively deified."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/…
----
In an earlier rant Steven Poole did a stomping of pseudoscience:
" This is the plague of neuroscientism – aka neurobabble, neurobollocks, or neurotrash – and it’s everywhere."
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/…

A snippet from that article:
"Cyber-thinkers have run with the wisdom-of-crowds notion to a place that bears little resemblance to reality as we know it, high-fiving each other among the rubble of reason in a fatuous kind of hi-tech, misanthropic herd-worship."

Before anyone else points out the disharmony of excoriating technology with text in pixels rather than ink ... noted.
Posted by YossarianMinderbinder]]> Sun, 23 Dec 2012 01:22:25 -0600 Arkansas Times
Fara is also an attorney, I believe. And last I heard, she lives in Alabama, Georgia, Florida or somewhere over that way.

Also — and somebody can shoot me if I’m wrong — I believe Farrell and Martha Jo had split and Farrell was married to another woman at the time of his death.

That’s all. I’m done. Really.
Posted by Durango]]> Sun, 23 Dec 2012 00:13:49 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Cato]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 22:27:37 -0600 Arkansas Times
I can't imagine why David Helfond would be walking the streets today...though he'd sure as hell fit in. I'd think murdering 1 person in cold blood should get you life in prison without parole or juiced. If the guy that killed HHW's relative ever gets out of prison I can think of about a dozen people who'll be standing at the prison gate armed to the teeth to see that he doesn't make it 5 feet.

I'm a kind and compassionate person but as Huckabee showed us, killers should never get another chance to kill again. NEVER.
Posted by DeathbyInches]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 22:01:36 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by plainjim]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 21:25:57 -0600 Arkansas Times
Thanks for the killer’s name, plainjim. I googled him and apparently the scumbag will be in the slammer until he dies. Seems he was handed two additional life terms (to be served consecutively) following his sentence in the Faubus case.

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1985-02-1…
Posted by Durango]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 21:14:55 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by plainjim]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 20:34:40 -0600 Arkansas Times
Elizabeth Faubus was murdered by a young man (in his 20s) who was also involved in the killings of two other Houston-area women in the early 1980s. The man confessed his guilt in the Faubus case and was sentenced to life in prison.

Ellen Kreth of Little Rock is the daughter of the late Farrell Faubus and the granddaughter of Orval and Alta. She is a former writer (she still contributes now and then) and is also a lawyer.

A cancer survivor, Ellen is very much involved with the Arkansas chapter of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. She is a gentlewoman in every sense of the word, and one of the nicest people one could ever hope to meet.
Posted by Durango]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 20:34:32 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Cato]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 20:16:57 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by plainjim]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 19:09:32 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Cato]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 18:53:06 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Jabberwocky]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 18:39:27 -0600 Arkansas Times
A CNN journalist was in the Old City in Jerusalem and learned of an elderly Jewish man who had been going to the Western Wall to pray twice a day, every day, for decades.

Heeding the orders of her assignment editor, the reporter went to check it out. And sure enough, there he was, walking slowly and with the aid of a cane up to the holy site.

The journalist watched the old man as he prayed for about 45 minutes, and when he turned to leave, she approached him for an interview.

"Pardon me, sir, I'm Rebecca Smith from CNN,” she said, “May I ask your name?"

"Morris Feinberg," the hobbling old man replied weakly.

"Sir,” said the reporter, “I’ve been observing you and I’m wondering how long you’ve been coming here to the Western Wall to pray?”

"Oh, for about 75 years," replied the frail old gentleman.

"Seventy-five years!” exclaimed the CNN reporter, “That is amazing! Please tell me, kind sir, for what do you pray?"

"Well, I pray for peace among the Christians, the Jews and the Muslims," said the old man. “I pray for understanding. I pray for all the hatred to cease. I pray for all the wars to stop. I pray for forgiveness. I pray for healing. I pray for an end to all our weaknesses. I pray for strength to get my people through difficult times. I pray for happiness to prevail over sadness. I pray for equality for women. I pray for all our children to grow up safely as responsible adults and to love their fellow man. I pray that politicians will tell us the truth and put the interests of the people ahead of their own interests.”

"That is wonderful,” said the reporter. “And how do you feel after offering all these prayers for seventy-five years?"

"Like I'm talking to a fucking wall," the old man said.
Posted by Durango]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 18:01:05 -0600 Arkansas Times
I agree with the lady.
Posted by wannabee conservative]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 17:04:44 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Olphart]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 16:23:34 -0600 Arkansas Times
"Gripes and garbage

A few months back, I suggested online that letters to the editor about religion should be placed in the Religion section when it appears each week.

After seeing all the condemnation, hatred, self-righteousness, bigotry and finger-pointing tirades that have landed with an effluvious plop and accompanying stench on the Voices page, I now understand why the Religion editor probably doesn’t want such besmirching his section and its message of peace and understanding.

So, maybe you want to start a new section of the paper. Call it, say, Gripes and Garbage?

JAKE TIDMORE

Little Rock
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"The gods we've made are the gods you'd expect to be made by a species that's half a chromosome away from being a chimpanzee."
--Christopher Hitchens

Posted by eLwood]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 16:03:45 -0600 Arkansas Times
omg it's a nativity camel. Jennings would approve of this woman's right to her display. But he might insist on it being a camel. Maybe not, though.
Posted by Vanessa]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 15:44:10 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by SkyPilot]]> Sat, 22 Dec 2012 15:19:28 -0600 Arkansas Times