Over at Seven Revolutions they are trying to outmaneuver the apocalypse. Actually, they are looking into the seven most daunting problems and challenging revolutions in store for us in the near future. Do you get the knee-jerk reaction to overpopulation that I do? Well, maybe we're right. I live in Las Vegas, an ostentatious and artificial oasis in the desert. Did you know that about half the world's population lacks access to clean drinking water? Can you guess the other five before the page opens?

I just finished reading The Donkey Show by Michael Patrick Welch. I met Patrick one day on the couch of his girlfriend’s neighbor’s house, where in a galaxy of artful minds and conversations he only stood out as the new guy. We didn’t get a chance to become friends. He was just settling in while I was moving on. After reading The Donkey Show I wish I had had that chance.
The narrative is charged with the schizophrenic energies of New Orleans; poverty, wealth, wealth in poverty, poverty in wealth. Every time something good happens you’re waiting for the other shoe to fall. Every time tragedy strikes look around the corner for the city to resurrect joy from pain. The book tells you, and reminds me, what its like to arrive in New Orleans a foreigner, minority, cautiously excluded, and cautiously welcomed. Patrick teaches at a public school in New Orleans and of all the pregnant tales, tells the reader the lessons he learned from his students, and by inference ones he didn’t. He serves fancy meals at a fancy restaurant while his first Mardi Gras rolls by right in front of him, and lets us in on the wait staff rantings with its defacto race, sex, and gender politics. He falls in love and finds his way, for now. Sadly he doesn’t tell us if he ever made it back to Costa Rica, but at the end of the book he gives you his email address so you can just drop him a note and ask.
While despairing to impart the simplest of instructions Patrick tells his writing students to “review the content.” I did my best. The last time I saw Patrick he was sitting on his bike with his girlfriend on his lap waiting for the next parade to roll down Canal Street. The Donkey Show tells some of Patrick’s story, but there’s a lot more, and I’d love to hear it.

Find Michael Patrick Welch at these other links:
Equator Books, Author Profile.
Gambit Weekly Author Archives.
commonplace, the author's blog.
An early piece of The Donkey Show at The Edward Society.
and the essay Animal Hospital at BIGnews - A Publication of Mainchance.

First person to ask gets it. I have released it via BookCrossing.

What is the role of government? What should government provide to citizens? I'm getting into a civil responsibility kick. I'm frustrated that Republicans and Democrats are presented as viable, opposing alternatives to governance. The only things that strongly separate our political parties are the fringe issues like abortion and gun controls. But I have to believe (and I hope you're with me) that most Americans hold opposing values on these issues and struggle to know what's best. I feel like we are being swallowed by consumer capitalism, government by corporation, and as a sideline we have electioneering and scandal-mongering. The politicomedia complex distracting us from the fact that only corporate lobbyists can buy access to government. What ever happened to representation?

There's something to finding the edge of a cliff. Something animal in me that screams with fear and adrenaline, "That's a cliff right there! We're close to the edge!" It's a thrill to overcome this, or to embrace it and master myself.
"I know its a cliff. I'm the one who brought us here."
Laying flat inching towards the edge of some gorge in Arizona or pushing my face past the guard rails atop the empire state building. Perhaps I run out of neural chemical signals or burn up all the receptors to carry them, or my body believes the lie I'm telling myself, "Everything's okay. I can get a bit closer." The animal gets put away.
In this way I creep towards the edge. I terrify myself, get a hold of myself, and terrify myself again. At some point the animal says "Who are you shitting?" and the only way to get a hold of myself is to back away from the edge. Having found it. Right there where I turned around.

In Las Vegas we have a lot of strip clubs. Recently one club in particular has been having advertisements on pretty early in the evening. Its the same commercial every time; with a kind of tinkley, wind chime, xylophone music and a bunch of scenes with women in bikini sized outfits. All of this is somewhat unremarkable.
This is what gets me: while my nephews are playing (2 and 4 years old), crashing cars, wrestling, whatever the commercial starts with the tinkle tinkle and everything else stops. They walk up to the television and stare in silence and when the commercial ends they go right back to what they were doing.
Should we turn off the TV? Alone and unprompted my two year old nephew will cross rooms like some Pavlovian puppy to watch this commercial. How is that possible?
I couldn't find a clip of the commercial...

I've been away for over a month. Sorry about that. I'd like to get back and produce something worth reading. There's more to come...

I think I need to admit I am totally in love with Amazon.com. Not really in love, but I have so many wonderful expectations.
I was an early adopter of internet shopping because of Amazon. I'm not sure when I made my first purchase but it was back in the days when dial-up was king.
The reason I shop at Amazon is because Amazon knows me as a customer. In retail, there's no other store that I am getting that from right now.
Take book shopping. I generally decide to shop for a book when I come across a title or author while I am doing something else. If I take this information to Big Box Retail Book Store (and I am lucky) I can find a specific book I am looking for. Generally, I wind up spending a lot of time looking at the bargain book racks and taking home some great deal that I'll never open.
Thanks to Amazon I've found enjoyable books that I wouldn't have even know to look for at Big Box Retail Book Store. That's the kind of shopping experience I come back for.

Growing up in Las Vegas I always wanted to be a Thunderbird pilot. On the 14th we nearly lost one. Capt. Chris Stricklin (USAFA '94) ejected with minor injuries just before his F-16 crashed. I came across this article with a video (KTVB.COM | Idaho News | Idaho News on Demand) and these other videos: (video1, video2.)

Friday
I'm all over the place today; mentally and netwise. It's Friday after all. I came across NationMaster.com. It's fantastic. You can find out things like which countries are the most taxed. Like the CIA Factbook done with the capabilities of the internet in mind. (The scope of these sites only overlap on country statistics.) Also, check out the BBC Country Profiles if you're looking for background info of countries.

Sam Brown at explodingdog is drawing wonderful things.

How rich are you? >> I'm loaded. It's official. I'm the 53,095,965 richest person on earth!

The Global Rich List is trying to remind us of how well off we really are. (And get us to donate to CARE International.)

You will find on this page a reminder of 9-11-01. Watch it and pass it on.

Warren Zevon died yesterday Sunday, September 7, 2003. I first listened to Warren Zevon in the summer of 1998. A friend had a copy of Excitable Boy and it played in the car for months. I fell in love with the song Rolland the Headless Thompson Gunner. I can't say why for sure. It will always remind me of the cost of war; in success or failure. I once heard a statistic (while standing at the Vietnam Memorial) that more Vietnam vets have committed suicide than were killed in action. We ask our soldiers to kill, die, and for many, kill themselves.
On his farewell album The Wind, with a wry wink at death, Zevon covers Bob Dylan's Knockin' On Heavens Door. The album has received excellent reviews and its great.
Peace, Paul

I finished Evolving the Mind by A. G. Cairns-Smith a few days ago. For me it was rather ponderous. I may need to re-read it.

I picked this book because I came across a quote of Cairns-Smith's in Darwin Among the Machines by George B. Dyson. [A history of computing.]

As I understand it Cairns-Smith proposes that the conscious mind, the parts of mind that have feelings and effect behavior, are like a macro-quantum mechanical effect. (i.e. superfluidity or coherent light lasers) He argues that the mind is an evolved 'physical' phenomenon but its clear to him that our models of physicality are insufficient to know the mind. Indeed our misunderstanding of our world is the most substantial impression I took from the book.

For me this book was a challenging science primer, structured to hold up a proposal for consciousness. I would recommend it to interested readers who feel they have a strong grasp of the physical sciences.

Webcomics
If you want to read a fun (and cheap) web based comic book check out The Right Number by Scott McCloud.
I ran into this comic in a round about way. First I was browsing Friendster.com for new friends, if you can believe it, and I was reading about someone who liked Neil Gaiman. That reminded me to check out his blog. From there I learned about BitPass and how Scott McCloud is using it to distribute his comic webComic The Right Number.
BitPass is a prepaid mircopayments system that lets web content creators charge small amounts for things of value, albiet small value. I jumped right in. Got ten bucks in BitPass credit and bought The Right Number for $0.25. I sure hope that BitPass or something like it will catch on and encourage mircopayments.
Following the same thread I ran across CafePress.com which lets bloggers (anyone with a webpage) have their content manufactured for their audience. CafePress takes a cut and bloggers develop another revenue stream.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
I was happy to run across some reminders of Martin Luther King, Jr. today. The first showed up on This American Life, the second at the Indian Express, and the thrid over at the BBC.
At TAL’s Kid Logic Episode a father is explaining to his very young daughter first about the Christmas holiday and the teachings of Jesus and later about Martin Luther King Day and King’s teachings. (Listen to it here. Move slider to about 13:05 mark.)

Checking the news I bumped into the small quote, “In 1965, Martin Luther King recalled that during his visit to India he was introduced by a principal of a Dalit school in Kerala as an ‘untouchable from the United States.’” This led me to Pamela Philipose's cloumn Dream On, for the Future. She mentions that tomorrow is the anniversary of King’s “I have a dream" speech (listen to it here) and tries to convince her readers that the dream is for everyone. Unfortunately, the only response to the article says, "I say King belongs to Negros only.....not us Indians...." Its sure to me that we have a long way to go.

The next article I saw was more pessimistic. In An unfulfilled dream, T Rasul Murray, a witness and organizer of the March on Washington finds that little has changed in 40 years.

It seems to me that King will always be a leader to emulate. That in fact injustice should be opposed with love. When more people look to solutions that include self-sacrifice and forgivness we will have real hope for the future.

Bruce Mau is one of the people at MASSIVE CHANGE that is trying to point out what we are doing to the world and what we could be doing.

Love. Sex. Life.
Do relationships that start with lighnting bolts last? This American Life had a Valentine's Episode that tried to pick out stories of love that lasts; rather than love lost.

I've been bombarded with tragedy all day. Reeling from stories of ethnic and religious strife in Pakistan, the oppressive atmosphere of sexual assault in Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain, and from Margy Rochlin telling the story of her father Fred Rochlin on This American Life (listen here).

Hearing and reading I fidget with anger. I feel compelled to embrace more and more tragedy. Like it’s a crime to ignore it. As though I participate in causing the harm by not stopping it. It crushes me, hurts me. I'm whole. Not being annihilated. Not subject to unimaginable injustice; attack, murder, rape, and war.

And yet I am subject to injustice. I live in an unimaginably unjust world. Filled with all manner of evil and cruelty. I am disappointed. Cheated. I can’t imagine that this is how thing were meant to be. What does it mean to set things right? What will I do? I feel unable to do anything. I want everyone to equal but I am afraid to renounce my privileges. White. Male. American.

I must do something.

I try to keep a notebook of terms and people I come across and don't know anything about. It’s a bit like a personal dictionary. It turns out to be a document recording my ignorance. Albeit, a partial record. So I'm always looking for good sources of biographical material on the net. I found a good source for authors at the BBC while looking for Zadie Smith.

She shows up in Episode One of The Whole Wide World talking about her multicultural origins and their expression in the new globalism. After listening to her I got recommended by Amazon to buy her book White Teeth and that same day I came across an article in Newsweek called A Slacker's Delight which mentioned White Teeth. So I caved. I bought White Teeth (and Autograph Man, for good measure.)

Its funny, this book was a best seller, won all kinds of first-book awards, and was broadly marketed in 2000 and I never heard of it until a few weeks ago when I get this hat-trick of late stage documentary marketing. I had to buy it. Synchronicity and all. I want to write, "It’s a good book" and be done with it. I enjoyed reading it and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in updating their views on, so called, post-colonialism.