How much of a risk-taker are you?

Whoopi Goldberg just told a wonderful story about feeling like a risk-taker by nature, until she knows what the risks are. She was walking in the woods in Africa, thinking of it as a safe risk ("Hey, I'm from New York!"), when her guide told her about a skinny snake that drops from trees and bites you in the ear to deliver the poison. "What!" she said, "What the hell are we doing walking out here, for!"

I've got my own tale as well. I thought well enough of snakes when living in the Northeast, as mostly my encounters were with the small, 5" garden variety. Then, moving to Tennessee, my encounters started stretching to 2-foot long, 2"-diameter black and blackish red snakes appearing curled up on window sills of abandoned property, in the middle of roads, or stretched across our garden paths. "They don't bother me. I don't bother them," I thought, a carry-over from my New York City days.

We recently discovered two living in our meadow when one got caught in the blades of the lawn mower tractor. The other one soon emerged and ended with a similar fate. Did I feel guilty? No--even though it's actually against the law to keep snakes as pets or deliberately kill them--not until I told the story at a recent graduation party, where all the locals sided with the snakes and their virtues. I definitely lost points on getting in with the locals that day.

Maybe they do eat mosquitos and rid your property of vermin, but I still feel less the risk-taker--especially when my two cats drag them into the house for play. So, I don't deliberately aim a vacuum cleaner at them, but I have a creative move with my barbecue tools and husband's spare wood. My aim is improving each time I get to fling them across into the neighbor's garden.

Spades with Spades

During a conversation with a friend, who so happens to self-publish her books, I mentioned the idea below, about writing a book on the evolution of technology applications. In essence, it seems that this giddy fascination of mine is to be shared with the few (yet another "esoteric" subject that occupies me in the hours of the night). So, e-book it will be and in my spare time.

On the other hand, she was enthusiastic about another topic that we all share in common. Truly, no one escapes this other story. Care to guess what it might be about?

The Technology Wave -- 2

Having had a chance to sleep on the idea, it's appealing more and more to me, this trace of technology history, like a wave, since the birth of the personal computer. How about "E-Merging Technologies: The Waves of the Future"--in the spirit of Alvin Toffler's Second and Third Wave works, and be a play on words with the E-bit?

Any thoughts?

I still don't believe there's an advantage to fully developing the idea within a blog, however. That would be like handing over a book proposal to the public. That said, there are areas and positions ("premise" for the literary minded) that may be useful to "debate" here, however. So, let's give that a whirl.

My thoughts are the following. In the 1980s...
>Videotex, electronic bulletin boards, and Apple's hypertext blended into what became a precursor for the Internet
>AT&Ts videophone was the precursor to Skype
>Car phones and other types of modular phones were precursors to cell phones

Do you have to be a techie to appreciate this? It is about the human interface, after all.

E-merging Technology book concept

Prelude
======
The notion for a book about the history of technology since the birth of the PC (personal computer) was hatched somewhere between the end of the educational panel at the Knoxville Writers Guild's April 26th gala last Saturday, and the first of many glasses of wine that evening.

The air was full of juice and electricity about the latest technological advancements and local applications of web site capabilities, blogging, and print on demand before an audience of seasoned writers. Suggestion to do it as an e-book as part of making the point about the significance of the medium being the message.

So, here we are. Hatching the egg electronically, or is it the chicken?

Luckily, my stints in traditional publishing have been enough to persuade me on these basic points. No matter what, you still need:
>a good story,
>someone else to look over your work and put some editing muscle into it,
>ways to get the work out in front of people


The Story Begins
--------------------------
Sunday, April 27, 2008
This one is beginning inside my calendar of Outlook, so I don't lose the inspiration of the moment, sans spell checker, sans formatting. If I follow the directions prescribed to me yesterday, this now needs to move out to a blog that I then list with the News-Sentinal and the radio station, so it can receive critiques. Against all odds, my heart in my mouth with years of copyright fears digested, I'm going to do this, then see what happens. I now challenge what everyone told me yesterday to see if it's true.

Some ideas to include in this book about
the history of technology since the 1980s
--------------------------------------------------
After the printing press, technology is the next major revolution is publishing.
How technology took the human race by storm
Will the human race be better for it?

Laundry list of stuff (add list later, but includes European videotex, IBM PC, Apple Mac and hypertext, fiber optics, CDI, first viruses [Jerusalem?], frame creation machines and scanners, SIGs, games, copying software, CompuServe, Atari/Commodore 64s, electronic bulletin boards, videophones, audio/videoconferencing, freeze frames)

What obstacles need to be overcome?
Is technology a challenge by the future upon the past?
The medium is the message, but content is everything.
In communities, not groups, is how we see ourselves.
The community of folks involved in any work can help to make the art better, and no matter how good the product.
All content needs integrity
After serendipidity and dating services, the Internet has become the next major way
for people meet each other
Will the human race fight wars through technology (from pac man to "war games")?

How does "The Technology Wave" work as a working title? Or better, "E-merging Technology: The History of Technology since 1980"?

Central Park on a summer's day

What's on My Front

Tennessee, 9/11/07. What's the latest?

News from my front....
*Just finished the Harry Potter book and I think the best part is when Mrs. Weasley finishes off a DeathEater for having wacked her daughter Ginny during the battle of Hogwarts. The saddest part is what happens to the house gobblin (I cried shamefully). The funniest is when Potter is trying to slip into the school unnoticed and the whole Dumbledore army appears.
* I'm days away from an adventure to Greece where I will explore the reality of reattributing a family apartment in Thessaloniki.
* Just started Nineteen minutes by Jodi Picoult. The first 19 minutes of reading were great. Now I need to finish the book.


Now for the truly embarrassing, and facing, moment: For the first time in six years (why six?), I'm just recognizing September 11 for what it is, a day on the calendar. In stead of waking up to that painful rememberance, it is now a day like any other, and it should be.

The events that took place on September 11, 2001 are unique and should be remembered in full for what happened, not as the day they took place on. Too often I see people refer only to the World Trade Center, when in fact lives were also lost in Washington, DC and over a field in Pennsylvania. The fact that war in Iraq is nearly a weekly reminder of similar ilke, may be why those events are now taking their rightful place in the annals of the war against terrorism. Much blood and sweat has flowed under the bridge in six years. It's truly a sad condition, this world we find ourselves in.

And together, we can do something to change the world....

Forgiveness: A Means for Survival

Thurs., July 26, 2007, New York. Yesterday, French television interviewed the 6 prisoners (5 Bulgarian nurses and 1 Lebanese physician) who were just released from Libya, after being held captive for accidently infecting over 400 Libyan children with the AIDS virus 8 years ago.
During one of the interviews, an intriguing feature emerged: Forgiveness is not only a samarital act, but a tool of self-survival.

The eldest of the 5 nurses, who is in her early 50s, was asked about being periodically tortured, a subject that was difficult for all of the ex-prisoners to broach. When asked how she felt, she replied that she held no feelings of revenge and that she had already forgiven her captors.

"I would not be here now if I had not forgiven them," she said, implying she would not have had the strength to survive had she spent what little energy she had left in bitterness or revenge.

What Women Can Do

7/25/07, New York. Cécilia Sarkozy, the wife of the recently elected French president Nicolas, played an essential part in the negotiations with Colonial Kaddafi for the release of 6 prisoners from Libya. In his interview with the press, President Sarkozy acknowledged that perhaps the role of the First Lady can be different as a modern woman.

She needed no titles, no political party, no entourage to accomplish what 8 years of conventional diplomacy failed to do. The 5 Bulgarian nurses and 1 Lebanese physician had been on death row 3 times for infecting over 400 children with the AIDS virus. We will soon find out what she did to accomplish her mission. She was part of a team, some presumably more expert than her at foreign affairs, also representing the European Union.

What qualities did she bring to the negotiation table that hitherto had been lacking?

Is this any indication of what women can do?

Photo: Jardin des Plantes, Paris, France. Dragon created with recycled materials. Dec. 2006.

Is America ready for a female president?

There was a time when American women yearned for the opportunity to see a female candidate stand for election in a presidential campaign. Now, with no legal barriers to speak of, even women seem ambivalent about putting an experienced one in the White House. “Women once advocated it was time for them to stand for elections and in turn have a voice in legislative issues that affect their lives, but do they have the qualities and skills needed to do that?” asks Natasha Thomsen, author of Global Issues: Women’s Rights (Facts on File, 2007).

Admittedly, three major superpowers—France, the United Kingdom, and the United States—are all holding presidential elections in 2007 and 2008 without incumbent candidates, a scenario that would challenge any candidate, male or female. Many even say our country is behind the times all ready, but when the Group of Eight summit met in June 2007, hostess German Chancellor Angela Merkel was pretty much on her own. Ségolène Royal had just been tested in the French elections and lost to her opponent Nicolas Sarkozy. This begs the questions: what will it take to put a female president in the White House and do American voters really want one there?

Women don’t seem so concerned now about gender but about the kind of person they might empower. Many women openly professed their disdain for Royal’s uppity manner and Hillary Clinton’s popularity is out-weighed by her calculating manner and husband’s razzle-dazzle (despite public disapproval of his adultery record). Nancy Pelosi is often characterized as being on a power trip.

Women today seem pretty bent on empowering a candidate who stands for what they believe in, or not vote at all. The fact that previous generations of women didn’t throw their weight behind a candidate such as Geraldine Ferraro, when she ran as Walter Mondale’s running mate in 1984, shows they are actually ambivalent about playing the gender card. “What kind of personal and professional development is this now calling for in women?” asks Thomsen.

If it’s anything like the Equal Rights Amendment, which has been awaiting ratification by Congress since 1923, the real worry centers around the use of power. This same argument might apply to the 1981 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which also awaits U.S. ratification. In short, the American Government—presumably composed of men and women—are concerned about the use and abuse of powerful words, more than the issues that gave rise to these political instruments in the first place.

So is this country ready for a female president? Probably as much as Germany was ready for Ms. Merkel, England for Margaret Thatcher, or India for Indira Ghandi. The question is if there a woman candidate who has the qualities, energy, and leadership skills that Americans—men and women—will appreciate and that can guide this country through the shark-infested waters of terrorism, war, and environmental casualties.

Future articles at Thomsen’s web site (http://users.bestweb.net/~nthomsen/clips.htm) and blog (http://natasha-place.blogspot.com/) will focus on what qualities voters are seeking in a president of the United States and how this might impact gender choice. (What exactly is the role of the role models of the 21st century? What do women have to do to not let politics put them into a power-steering mode?) How dress and age might also impact pubic opinion will also be discussed. Other articles will address women’s consciousness and how this is impacting their awareness about women’s status in society—physically, professionally, personally, and spiritually.

Natasha Thomsen is a freelance writer and entrepreneur. She can be reached at nmthomsen@aol.com or http://natasha-place.blogspot.com/. Global Issues Women’s Rights (Facts on File) is available online at http://www.factsonfile.com/newfacts/FactsDetail.asp?PageValue=Books&SIDText=0816068097&LeftID=0.

Blending art and technology

Who would have know? A predominantly academic-styled master's program ("technology applications") has escalated into mayhem, justifing its presence within the School of the Arts. ("School of the Smarts")

"Interactive" applications strive forward, with technology meeting art, education, and public service. This is part of that relentless push of the new challenging the old--from visual acceptance to psychology and nerves. I spent the better part of the evening at the Interactive Telecommunications Program (better known as Red Burns' ITP) at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. If it wasn't a bag-toting wheel chair to help disabled people manage their carry-alongs, it was a language tutoring program that adapts your conversation to the lessons, or a smell-sensory umbrella that helps you relive someone else's memories. And more, oh so much more...
I'll have to add them in the next day or two, if anyone is really interested.