 MEMOIRS OF THE INFORMATION AGE:
ELECTRONICA: Hitting the Wall
ED CANTARELLA
Starting with a rough standard and increasing the precision further and further. Mankind just loves to fine tune every type of physical measurement down to a practical and acceptable "everyman" degree.
 Scientist types will undoubtedly establish increasingly precise measurements of some of the same quantities. For the average person, and even for most businesses, the point of reasonable standardization that we could HAPPILY LIVE WITH for several years, IMHO, is upon us in the field of consumer electronics.
Three of the most common and pertinent areas of electronics measurement and standards correspond directly to our senses:
- graphical output (sight);
- audible output (hearing) and
- tactile movement (touch).
I personally believe that we have actually OVERSHOT the reasonably necessary degree of perfection in some of these areas of "consumer electronics."... More
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SHE SAID: This is from a children's poem. I thought you needed it now.
In dusky pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun
You certainly are having trouble getting comfortable. Take it from one who knows, you can't seem to "find the center of your ch'i". I do not understand how you live in the city. I do not understand how you write out all that is happening to you, within you, on the net. (Well, NOT ALL) I don't know what you're looking for.
HE SAID: It's kindah like Brando in the "The Wild Ones..." I mean that most people used to ask me "What are you rebelling against?" And I would answer: "Whaddaya got?"
Looking for? Well, quite obviously The Last Woman. My anima. Wholeness. Home.
SHE SAID: So, why New Orleans?
HE SAID: Maybe because I've never been there. It's cheap. It's romantic.
SHE SAID:You're like a black walnut, it takes a hammer to crack one of those things, but you're all liquid center. I guess I don't write more often because
- some days you seem so harsh, you're so way masculine and abrasive, sophisticated, brutal, what's that hunting word?
- I still become confused when I read your "maunderings", and I assume you have cool people around to council you, people who can keep up. that's some of it, anyway.
HE SAID: A "tough nut" with a liquid center. Now there's a good metaphor and a good laugh. I was always "way masculine and abrasive," no? At least the first half. The abrasiveness came after a lot of the pain. Don't know the hunting word.... More
 RDR 01.12.01: In January, 1998, G21 alumnus KIM CARTER sent us this report on Thailand's "Buffalo Fights."
RDR 01.17.01: ROD AMIS on showers of Blessings. "The Postman Never Rings"
G21 STUFF: We know. You want to let people know that you KNOW.
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GAIA is a French-based site (available in multiple languages like ourselves) that offers the opportunity for people all over the world to connect for humanitarian action.
By "people" I mean enterprises like this one, non-governmental and non-profit organizations, and just regular folks concerned with the future of our species.
They launched on 4 January, 2001, but have been in communication with G21: The World Magazine since last autumn. They invited us to be one of their original Partners. We invite you to visit them when you're not with us. It makes sense.
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POWERSSOUND: It's an achievement, but not much of one. It doesn't say much for me as a writer, or you as a reader. I have persisted through more than two years of sitting down nearly every week and writing about the latest music to have rattled in my ears.
Columns exist for a reason. Readers. No readers, no column. While most of the time I write about jazz, the number of jazz fans in the United States has taken a sharp downturn over the past couple of decades. At one time, jazz album sales amounted to roughly 15% of all music sales. Today, sales have declined to a mere 3%, a statistic that must rip through the hearts of all devoted jazz admirers.
Yet, apparently "Powerssound" has rattled the bushes, exposing to the world that few oddballs who find jazz palatable and who enjoy being informed of the newest releases from the jazz community. Publisher Rod Amis has permitted me to continue my obsessive love affair with jazz, an affair now flaming for more than a half-century. (I was very young when I first heard jazz, I hasten to point out.)... "100 Columns, But Who's Counting?" BOB POWERS More
MY GLASS HOUSE: : I'm asking all of you to do me a favor: START VISUALIZING ROD HAPPY IN NEW ORLEANS. There must a be a courtyard in our shared visualization, lush with oleander, magnolia, and maybe even a few roses. There must be a moist moss hanging from the crenulated gates. It must be near the river... "Beyond Limits" ROD AMIS More
VOX POPULI:
 From Meredith T., Tampa, FL, USA:
Hi Rod,
Matthew Osborne's poem was sobering, simple, and very moving. God, I hope this kid escapes Detroit's clutches and gets a good education and wakes up Americans one by one with his stark, elegant writing. I am reminded of an article in the most recent issue of Yes Magazine, a dual perspective piece on race called White on Black, Black on White. Unfortunately it's not published on their web site (http://www.yesmagazine.org/15prisons/15toc_main.htm) but it's worth tracking down a copy just for this article. (Hell, I'll mail you a photocopy if you can't find it.) Essentially it's a much-needed slap in the face to self-congratulatory white folks who think that racism is no longer a major problem. Some folks seem to think that affirmative action and the success of Black sports stars and the popularity of hiphop and the widespread mimicry of Black pop culture all have somehow relegated racism to isolated pockets in the state of Idaho. This article dispels that notion in a big hurry. But Matthew's poem conveys a similarly striking message in a poignant, powerful way. Great stuff.
Hope things are going better for you...thanks for keeping the G21 fires burning. Your light and heat are greatly appreciated.
Meredith
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Pianist Alfred Brendel
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DAY ONE: Perhaps it was the sluggish start to the new millennium but I could not work up any great enthusiasm for the leading political stories. While some were speculating about the health of Saddam Hussein with the sloppy febrility which characterises contemporary journalism I was celebrating Alfred Brendel's 70th birthday. While President-designate Bush was selecting a depressingly, predictably blinkered, cabinet I was enjoying an arrestingly heterogeneous bunch of talented friends giving Little Red Riding Hood at our village theatre. While British Conservative politicians were getting angry because the Labour Party was receiving major political donations from millionaires I was stimulated by the dense, minutely perceptive account of money and ethics in George Eliot's Middlemarch.
This orgy of self-indulgence culminated in a comparative analysis of recorded Beethoven Symphony cycles by Abbado (his second) and Zinman. It won't last; soon we will be back to front pages and luridly covered paperbacks.
It would be too much to expect unalloyed enjoyment of such a series of pleasures. Self doubt, if not guilt, is the birthright of the bourgeois liberal, the current reinterpretation of Original Sin.
Why should anyone have seven complete sets of Beethoven Symphonies when millions are starving (?) in --- well, I don't precisely know where they're starving at the moment --- but somewhere.
More rationally than compassionately I argued that I am firmly in favour of higher taxes because they compel the kind of redistribution which I do not have the moral fibre to undertake to the extent which I should; anyway, shut up and let me concentrate on different interpretations of this adagio...."Brendel at 70" KEVIN CAREY More
THE SEX COLUMN: With all the Linda Chavez kind of talk about women with "illegitimate" children being on the welfare rolls and creating a "cycle of poverty," you would think that Chavez-types would be all for sex education. But NO! Your Chavez-types would like to see all women barefoot and pregnant. They just want to see them that way in a Christian marriage to whatever Dude comes along.
Charlie the Tuna, as this column demonstrates, is all for sex education. I want to see people in America as educated about sex as they can possibly be. I want all of you to be all you can be in the bedroom. I do! It makes my life better, too, you see... "Sex School" CHARLIE THE TUNA More
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