Dana Blankenhorn

The Trouble with Kindle

The problem with Kindle isn't the device.

Even though the device will likely be obsolete within a year, given the need for color, given the need to support Web standards so blogs like this can go inside it.

The problem with Kindle is the business model.

• What's the licensing model on the content?
• Can I loan a Kindle book, or not?
• Can I transfer it to my PC?
  
  • Put it on the Web?
  • E-mail it to my mom?
  • Excerpt it in this blog post?
• Am I buying this content or just renting it?
• Does it support RSS feeds?
  
  • If it does, then isn't it just a Web browser tied to a proprietary network?
  • If it doesn't then aren't you just limited to dead tree books which Amazon and the publishers choose to set a license agreement on?
  • How about supporting spoken book standards like Daisy?

The New Space Race

These are still Sputnik days in The War Against Oil.

By that I mean, just as 50 years ago, most people are still in shock over the enormity of the challenge, and what may be necessary to meet it.

This, of course, is much bigger than what we faced 50 years ago. Most of the fear then was overdone. The Russians were not ahead of us technologically. They merely had a demonstration, based on rocket expertise acquired from Nazi Germany, which we had yet to exploit.

The War Against Oil, on the other hand, must become a living reality, worldwide. China is already fully engaged. This is a necessity on their part, given the Chinese economy's reliance on coal.

Ritalin Wars Do Damage

One of the more interesting news items to hit our house recently was that MRIs confirm how ADHD impacts brain development.

Areas of the brain which are taught in kindergarten, those involved in social rules and cues, develop slowly. Areas of the brain dealing with higher functions develop normally.

This doesn't just explain the physiology of ADHD, but may also explain some of our social pathologies toward it. The idea of changing when things are taught is anathema to many people. ADHD kids are taught things they can't learn, then blamed later for having failed to learn them.

Unfortunately this isn't how the news was read by readers of Judith Warner (right) in The New York Times.  Let kids be kids, and they'll grow out of it, reared its ugly head, " a nation of boys drugged into conformity by knee-jerk liberal school systems."

Pl-ease!

You can't "let ADHD kids be kids," in that you can't just let them run around loose, unmanaged, and expect them to learn anything. You have to find some way to give them structure, to make them sit, before they can learn. And once they do sit, they learn faster than other kids, they hyper-focus and can become better at what interests them. The sooner you can start this process, the sooner strengths can be recognized and rewarded.

In my own case, knowing about my ADHD might have been the best medicine, only I wasn't given it. Instead, I was sent to a psychiatrist who knew nothing of the condition and an offer of Ritalin was rejected by my mother, who said  "you're not going to put my kid on drugs."

The result was a pretty hellish childhood, at least from the point of view of my own mind, one which I've only forgiven my parents for in the last decade, since I learned the cause of my trouble. Instead of being given help I was sent to a Baptist youth camp upstate, which taught Revelations until it came out of my ears, complete with movies. Step out of line and you'll fry in hell, they said, and here's what it will look like. Those images still inform my nightmares and leave me more than a little skeptical about churches and God, even though I know such communities can help whether or not you believe the doctrine.

It's Gonna Get Dark, It's Gonna Get Cold

The title is from Billy Joel's It's All About Soul, and while it has been dark and cold since Billy stopped cranking out the hits, that's not what we're talking about. (Achtung, baby)

The subject is next year, the real crisis of our time, the true gotterdammerung for the conservative movement, the year when the dam breaks and it all goes to hell.

Liberals of a certain age (like Newsweek's Jon Meachum) well recall their own gotterdammerung. Martin died. Bobby died. Chicago. Nixon. Body bags piling up at the airport, bad trips all around.

All this is coming for the Right now. You better start swimming or you will sink like a stone.

This mess in Pakistan is just the appetizer. Afghanistan is likely to be lost, just as Iraq was. Putey-poot won't let you bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran. The crisis of global climate change will become more than obvious. There will be no immunity, no statute of limitations.

And that's not the worst of it.

This Week's Clue: The Wind That Doesn't Blow

Following is the essay you can designate as Volume 10, Number 46 of This Week's Clue, based on the e-mail newsletter I have produced since March, 1997. It would be the issue of November 19.

Enjoy.

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The most destructive force in American politics is the wind that doesn't blow. (From Sarah's blog.)

It's the wind of an expired political thesis at a time of crisis. Right now it's the wind which supports the Republican Party's myths and values, the ideas which animate George W. Bush and all those who seek to follow him.

It's the Nixon Thesis of Conflict. It has lost its power, it is no longer believed by the people, it is completely irrelevant to our time, yet our media and government continue to treat it as absolute truth.

Every independent poll, and now two by-elections, are proof this wind no longer blows. By margins of nearly 2-1 Americans agree with Democratic principles on nearly every issue, even those issues Republicans have long held most dear, like terror and security.

Gore's Revenge

When Al Gore was passed over for President in 2000, he faced an historic choice.

He could seek revenge through politics, or in the market.

He chose the market.

For the first time in his life, Al Gore is a wealthy man. Not only did he snag the Oscar and get some fat royalties for An Inconvenient Truth, not only did he win the Nobel Peace Prize, but he also met some guys from California who were launching a little outfit called Google. (He's also on the Apple board.)

Now, while Hillary Clinton (who  was Bill's real Vice President anyway) continues on her Nixon-like quest for the Presidency, Al Gore is settling in with some Silicon Valley types and New York hedge fund managers to make himself some serious coin.

By gumption, the media is saying, it's unprecedented! No one has ever turned lemons into so much lemonade!

Wrong. Very wrong.

I live in Atlanta, and I know better.

What George W. Bush Has Done

George W. Bush has made me ashamed to be an American, and caused me to become enraged against millions of my fellow citizens.

This is not unusual for a crisis President. When a political thesis, a set of myths and values meant to inform power, becomes obsolete, the government is bound to ignore the reality of its time. It goes on auto-pilot, and does grave damage.

This last happened 40 years ago under Lyndon B. Johnson. World War II vets and their wives came to hate LBJ. They also became enraged against their own children, and the elites which coddled or enabled them. The kids in turn became enraged at the parents. They have lived in shame and reaction ever since.

It also happened at the bottom of the Great Depression, with people hating Hoover and the forces he represented. It happened in the 1890s, with people hating Cleveland and the Money Power he supported. It happened in the 1850s, with people hating Buchanan and the South.

Note, too, that the hate was returned in kind, in all these cases. It's hard to remember now the passion with which rich people hated Franklin D. Roosevelt, the class traitor. Or William McKinley. The hate against Lincoln we know, for history won't forget the Civil War or his assassination.

The point is it happens, it always happens. A crisis breeds hate.

So I hate Bush and all his works. I'm ashamed that my country destroyed the Fertile Crescent, the Cradle of Civilization, and I'll feel like strangling the next joker who tells me how evil Saddam Hussein was. Same with the one who claims I "hate the troops." I love the troops, it's their commanders I hate. They should suffer, all of them, eternal damnation for what they have done.

Old Media Turns On Itself

One of the telling signs of an imminent crisis is when the old media, defined as the medium which holds the power in politics, begins to turn on itself.

We're seeing that now on cable television, in all its glory. After years of marching in lockstep -- similar formats, similar presentations, even similar positions on issues -- the cable networks have turned on one another with increasing viciousness.

MSNBC, which as the #3 network would be expected to shake things up, is rumored to be going all-left, but more important Keith Olbermann (left) is being given an ever-longer leash and the chance to name names. Perhaps more telling is how CNN is all over the Judith Regan story as well, trying to puzzle out which Fox News executive is "going down" for suborning perjury. (More important they're doing this on-air, not online.)

In behaving this way, of course, both networks are just imitating #1 -- and there's no doubt that Fox is the leader in the ratings. They achieved leadership by essentially running a Talk Radio Network, filled with ego-driven talking heads always anxious to start a fight. People like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, as a result, have become the modern-day equivalent of rock stars, complete with adoring fans, and a feeling of immunity concerning what they say and do.

Or, perhaps, they're the equivalent of AM deejays.

This was, in business terms, brilliant. It targeted the audience, giving Fox exclusive access to a sizable slice of it. And it costs very little money. It costs a heck of a lot less than newsgathering does.

Always On in the Worst Way

Always On technologies, the use of wireless networks as an application platform linking sensors and data between you, your stuff and the Internet, can have powerful, positive impacts on our lives.

But it can also have negative implications. Always On can be misused to create a surveillance state, in which you are constantly a criminal suspect, where Big Brother is always watching, where freedom is just another word and control -- from business and government -- becomes absolute.

Unfortunately, that is the way it's being used today. AT&T, a company no one should trust with anything, let alone their security, is now selling businesses "remote monitoring" systems, from $350, which let businesses put customers and employees under constant surveillance.

While it's cool to do security monitoring using wireless networks, that's just one application space.

Time to Bury 1968

Newsweek has a big cover story this week about 1968.

I have written here many times about the importance of 1968 in setting America's political course.

It is time we buried 1968.

The average American today was not born in 1968. Why should they have the course of their lives determined by something which happened before they were born?

What are the problems of 1968 to us, that we should continue to be dominated by them? What are the solutions of 1968, that they should remain relevant?

Newsweek calls 1968 "the year that made us who we are." No it didn't. It didn't make me who I am. It didn't make my wife who she is. It's easy to note that Barack Obama was just a first-grader in 1968, but Hillary Clinton had yet to graduate college or meet Bill Clinton, and John Edwards was a teenager.

It is time we buried 1968.