Being American

Today, Morgan Freeman was quoted in a Yahoo News article as calling Black History Month “ridiculous”. Amen.

I’ve thought quite a bit about the issue over the past months. Like (almost) all Americans, I’m a descendant of immigrants. And, like the vast majority of immigrant descendants in the US, I’m NOT descended from the Pilgrims. They were a bunch of intolerant Protestants from England. My ancestors were a bunch of Portuguese from various Portuguese colonies in the Atlantic and Chinese from China. And yet, every November I, along with all those other descendants of non-Pilgrim immigrants, celebrate Thanksgiving. Why is this? Certainly, my heritage doesn’t include that first Thanksgiving the Pilgrims and their Indian (okay, Native American) friends celebrated. Or does it?

While my Portuguese and Chinese heritages don’t include that first Thanksgiving, my American heritage does. Yes, that’s right. For those of us who are citizens (and possibly some of us who aren’t), our heritage also includes America. Now, I happen to be very proud of my American heritage (also my Portuguese and Chinese heritages, but that’s another story). So, celebrations of holidays like Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Independence Day give me an opportunity to celebrate my American heritage.

So, what does this have to do with Black History Month?

Here’s the thing: I’m not descended from any African American slaves (or any other American slaves for that matter, there were others). This doesn’t mean that I don’t have anything in common with those slaves. Slavery was a fundamental part of the founding of America. We ended up fighting a war among ourselves over it (don’t be fooled by revisionist talk; if there had been no slavery, there wouldn’t have been a “wedge issue” to divide the states at the time of the civil war).

The way I see it, as all Americans are descended in spirit from that small group of Pilgrims celebrating thanks in Plymouth colony, all Americans are descended from those slaves that were imported to America from Africa, and did so much to make this country what it is today.

So, since there’s no Pilgrim History Month, there should be no Black History Month. As Morgan Freeman says, its all just American History, and we should be teaching it that way. They don’t teach the history of the Congo or Botswana in Black History Month, they teach the lives of great Americans, like Frederick Douglass and George Washington Carver (to name just a couple of great Americans). We shouldn’t be thinking of it as “those people’s history”, its all of our history too.

So, for those of you who may remember my question of “Why is Rosa Parks like Priscilla Alden?”, they were both great Americans. And I’m proud to be included with both of them (even if I have no idea what Priscilla Alden really did for us all).

12/15/2005 2:54:23 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  general

Amazing Race Finale

Frankly, I don’t know of any of you out there that might care about this, but since I do, here it is.

Last night was the Amazing Race finale, and it was quite an experience. The previous season wasn’t as exciting at the end (though I was a huge Rob & Amber fan). This one was very good. I was shocked that the Linz’s won. All I was hoping for was that the Weavers would not win, they were such mean spirited players. The Bransons definitely were the best players in the game and certainly deserved to be there at the end.

Anyway, congratulations, Linz’s! While I was surprised about the win, I was rooting for you guys all along.

12/14/2005 2:06:07 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  TV

Math problems

Something has to be wrong with my information or calculations.

I’ve been doing some investigation, and, in 2004, the national murder rate in the U.S. was 5.5 per 100,000 people.

According to the CIA, the US population is 295,734,134.

This means that in 2004, approximately 16,000 people were murdered. Is this right? What am I doing wrong? This can’t be right. That’s sixteen thousand people murdered last year.

I can’t believe that this is correct…

12/14/2005 12:02:46 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  general | politics | world affairs

Changing the way we watch TV

Jason Fry has an interesting article in the WSJ on the impact that TiVo has had on his son. I think that those of us who have been using DVRs for a while will be able to relate to this.

In the narrow sense, I’m repeatedly concerned that my brand, Replay TV, doesn’t get the media attention of TiVo. Frankly, I consider Replay TV superior, but it ran into early legal troubles with the networks over commercial skipping and has been relegated to a back seat in the DVR experience.

In the broad sense, this shows the generational nature of technology adoption. My older niece has no concept of not having a VCR/DVD in the house, and my younger niece has her own cell phone and Internet connected computer. My cousin’s kids take their computers (laptops) to school with them, which is mandatory there. When my dad grew up, not everyone had cars. I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have one. Times change, and “normal” technology changes with it.

12/12/2005 10:07:31 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  TV

Government Workers and Religious Holidays

Here’s an interesting mental exercise:

Should government agencies be prevented from taking Sunday off because its a religious holiday?

If you doubt that Sunday is a “holiday”, then check your “red-letter” calendar. While Saturdays are marked in black, traditionally all Sundays are marked in the red, “holiday” color.

Also, is a national holiday of Christmas a violation of church and state separation?

 

12/8/2005 9:41:17 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  general

Unintended Consequences
So, has anybody thought that global warming might be beneficial?
12/6/2005 9:57:50 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  

What does it mean to be "Tolerant"?

Michael Barone published an interesting entry on the limits of tolerance. I think that it raises an interesting question: Does tolerance require the tolerating intolerance?

For me, it brings to mind the “fact” (at least I think its a fact) that America’s religious freedom was born out of religious intolerance. Part of the “free expression of religion” that folks like the Pilgrims and Puritans came to America for was to limit free expression within their own group (or even locality).

There seems to be a fine line here.

12/6/2005 9:11:56 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  world affairs | politics | general

IT Motivation

I was reading the tail column in the November 21 edition of InfoWorld, “Off the Record (Anonymous Tales from the Front Lines)”.  The title of the article is “When Your Clients Hate IT”. The author relates a story of having to deal with users who’ve been burned by a previous BPA (Business Process Analyst). At the end of the article he says “I sometimes wonder why people, especially the customer-facing ones, in the IT profession forget that they belong to a service organization”. While I understand, and empathize, with his feelings, he doesn’t seem to understand the realities of the IT world. Having worked for five years in IT, I learned quite a bit about that particular viewpoint.

There are three typical attitudes that you’ll see among IT workers:

1. “This is just a job”: These folks come to work and do their job. It’s a paycheck to them, and they have not real personal investment beyond that. They’re the IT equivalent of the civil servant. These folks don’t seem to realize that this attitude is not conducive to a long career in IT. And, in fact, they’re usually the first to go in a downturn. On the bright side, they’re extremely rare in the IT industry. As a whole, there’s just too much stress and overwork to make this type of job attractive to the paycheck crowd.

2. “I’m here for the users”: These folks get their “reward” from empowering and supporting the line workers. Judging from the tone of the article I read, this is the type of IT worker who wrote it. And, this was the type of IT worker I was for those five years. As I learned the hard way, career advancement for these types is also limited. This is where the “reality” of IT enters the picture, and the third type of IT worker.

3. “I’m here to get ahead”: These folks know which side of the bread is buttered. They know the primary fact of life for IT, and act accordingly. Which leads to this important fact: IT gets its rewards from the executives, and its the executives that a successful IT worker must keep happy. Often, this means ignoring the “needs” of the line worker while satisfying the needs of an executive or executives. This is the dirty, little secret of IT: success is not connected to satisfying line workers (at least not directly) or even to business success of the company, it’s all tied to keeping VP’s, Presidents, and various “Chief” officers happy. When they’re happy, IT is rewarded. If they’re not happy, then IT feels the brunt. The sad fact is that because IT is seen as an “internal” “service” department, their productivity is rarely connected to the success/failure of line workers or the company as a whole.

12/2/2005 10:12:43 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  general

Well, this is a surprise!

A few moments ago, I went to the OOPSLA 2006 site, just to see what’s going on and where it will be. Well, did I get a surprise! It’s going to be in Portland next year! sweet!

12/1/2005 12:01:39 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  development

New Media

I don’t (as yet) have a “movie” category, so this gets cross filed as both “TV” and “General”.

In checking the news today, two thoughts concerning the current state of the Entertainment industry popped into my head:

1. The movie industry is overdue for a paradigm shift. Theaters are not cutting it anymore. Personally, I’m going to about 1 movie a year now. I’d much rather be sitting in my living room, complete with surround sound and a wide screen TV, watching a DVD than schlepping to the movie theater just to “share the experience” with a bunch of strangers. And, frankly, the picture quality at the theater is not as good as what I have at home. It’s time for the theaters, and the movie industry as a whole, to do something about this. So, either they give up on theaters (not an impossibility, where are all the drive-ins now?), or they remake them into some kind of super living room. Frankly, if they don’t figure out something soon, the movie going public with figure it out for them.

2. Then, there’s TV. According to New York Metro, this summer Universal did an interesting thing: they released a movie based upon a TV series that flopped. Of course, I’m talking about Serenity, the movie version of the Firefly series that Fox cancelled (they also cancelled Family Guy. sounds like a pattern forming). The article (much later, but read the whole thing anyway) goes on to speculate that if Joss Whedon were to do a new season of Firefly, direct to DVD, he could end up with $40 million to play with, without a network or advertisers, or even a schedule time slot. How sweet would that be? TV’s due for a major shakeup. The big thing’s not that you can download Lost or Desperate Housewives to a little hand-held device, but that this technology lets you watch the show whenever you want! It’s only a matter of time (and not a lot of that) before people are watching TV shows when they want, where they want with (possibly) little or no commercial interruption, or commercials will be targeted specifically to them (a la Google), so folks will actually choose to watch them. I can’t wait…

 

11/30/2005 5:08:28 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [0]  general | TV