Among them, vote for government support of pure science that has no immediate "market" objective:
For engineers and scientists like Mr. Medin, who went on to be a co-founder of @Home Networks and is now trying to build a national wireless data network, the NSFnet experience provides a lesson about interplay between technology and government policy.
“In that era the government said, ‘Let’s experiment and move everyone forward,’” he said. “If you had waited for a market, it would never have funded an NSFnet.”
Also, yet one more reminder to the obstinate dolts who still accuse Al Gore of claiming he "invented" the Internet, without bothering to check their history:
(His actual oft-misquoted, contest-stripped claim was about "taking the initiative in creating the Internet" and "in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection" -- perfectly sensible language for what legislators are supposed to do and how government, corporations and legislation enabled the Internet to be something useful to all of us):
"Many of the scientists, engineers and technology executives who gathered here to celebrate the Web’s birth say [Gore] played a crucial role in its development, and they expressed bitterness that his vision had been so discredited.
Mr. Gore had been instrumental in introducing legislation, beginning in 1988, to finance what he originally called a “national data highway.”
“Our corporations are not taking advantage of high-performance computing to enhance their productivity,” Mr. Gore, then a senator, said in an interview at the time. “With greater access to supercomputers, virtually every business in America could achieve tremendous gains.”
Ultimately, in 1991, his bill to create a National Research and Education Network did pass. Funded by the National Science Foundation, it was instrumental in upgrading the speed of the academic and scientific network backbone leading up to the commercialized Internet.
“He is a hero in this field,” said Lawrence H. Landweber, a computer scientist at the University of Wisconsin who in 1980 made the pioneering decision to use the basic TCP/IP Internet protocol for CSNET, an academic network that preceded NSFnet and laid the foundation for “internetworking.”
Sadly, that doesn't make a good soundbite. It's easier to repeat the campaign commercial smear and misdirect it into language "the people can understand."
It's hosted on an already existing "network" of sports blogs started and run by some college students and recent grads. Rough on the edges, they, but young and ambitious, too. For me, it was easier and imposed more obligation -- which I wanted -- than setting up my own standalone blog. Though as a "business," it won't allow me to do the amateur-blogging practice of borrowing images from other sites ... so I have no fancy action photos to go with the copy. Alas.
My chief motive was to try a different kind of writing -- an almost daily obligation that sticks more or less to one topic vs. the higher ed or blog-topic of the moment I typically do. I want to reach my writing capacity to get a sense of what works best, routine-wise, if I want to drop everything and focus on creative writing.
But I'm also motivated by an unnatural affection for the Islanders.
As NHL teams go, the Islanders are not particularly sexy and haven't been so for 20 years. Which of course means that, as far as North American professional sports teams go, they are really not particularly sexy.
(A fitting illustration of where the Islanders stand, image-wise, in the sports landscape, may be seen by the photo used to illustrate this Onion story, aptly titled "Walking Sports Database Scorns Walking Sci-Fi Database.")
The Islanders had glorious "dynasty" years when they won the first four Stanley Cups of the 1980s. Those were my formative hockey years and explain my curious thousand-miles-away addiction to them. They were on TV, winning Cups, and having more of their players featured on hockey cards than other teams. They had a pleasing color scheme. They were from Long Island, as opposed to what my father called the "Short Island Smurfs" (Rangers) on Manhattan.
But after that, their stars retired and their support was eroded by a series of laughably bad owners -- one of whom didn't even have the money he used to "buy" the team. They're still trying to recover from that, and they're doing a decent job, when you exclude the other socio-economic-taste factors that affect the NHL.
See, the NHL has a media coverage and popularity problem, but I don't care. As with voting, the more people who feel compelled to get involved, the more uninformed yahoos end up dominating the conversation. So I am happy with hockey being a quasi-niche sport, and with my having to search out decent coverage of it.
Part of the NHL's antidote to its coverage problem is to tap into online-savvy fans -- "the next generation" -- and some teams, like the Islanders, have even offered press-like access to bloggers for coach and player interviews. At 1,000 miles away, I'm not part of that, but I thought it would be fun to track and synthesize the best of the bloggers who are. And shed a little tiny bit of cyber-light on a team that could use some more love.
Speaking of forms of dorkiness, I'm damn near speechless about LARPing and foam-sword play. I loosely knew a guy who did the medieval swordplay thing with a bunch of regulars in Forest Park. To each his own harmless fun and pastime, but damn ...
A favorite excerpt:
"When we originally started cooperating with the filmmakers, we were concerned with exposing this hobby—which is relatively dorky, all things considered—to the public," Wells says. Lipman adds: "There's still debate over whether the events that took place in the documentary are part of official Darkon history or was it all a dream scenario, because there's a feeling that the camera was a motivational factor. But I feel that they captured Darkon at its best."
The war between Mordom and Laconia teaches many valuable strategic lessons: Numbers and money will always carry the day; everyone wants to be on the winning team; the army that defends a large, plywood castle probably has a tactical advantage; and dark elves will most likely turn on you the second your back is turned, no matter how much money you pay them.
But there's also this poignant bit, which touches on the intersection of work, life and what-the-hell-are-we-doing-here-anyway:
Play is as necessary to civic health as dreaming is to mental health, but playing makes Americans suspicious. We measure our worth by our jobs, but what happens when there are fewer and fewer meaningful jobs? Many of the Darkon players are trapped in the classic nerd conundrum: They don't find the corporate track fulfilling, and so they wind up working as Starbucks baristas and office administrators. At the same time, they're smart enough to know that being called a Starbucks "team member" is just a nicer way of being called a Starbucks slave.
"Everything is gone," Andrew of Laconia says. "Everything that was once noble and good in this world is gone and it's been replaced by Wal-Mart. And McDonald's. And Burger King. Some people just want more. They're tired of working their ass off for material goods. You could just stay home and watch TV, or you could work for adventure, you know?"
“Indolence is the natural character of a cat, to such a degree that nothing but the necessities of hunger, thirst, and other wants equally pressing can stimulate it to action, until domestication is introduced.” -- John Adams*
“A cat acts only because it wants. You domesticate a cat by increasing his wants, or, as his wants increase he becomes domesticated. You find a lazy cat who would not hunt a mouse to save your life. But let him have a few tastes of wet food, and he will run his legs off after the mouse.” -- Robert Ingersoll, 1892*
Probably not right to compare cats to old Western thinking about civilized man vs. the "lazy savage," but it just rang a bell. I love the thought of the lazy house cat sprung into action not to please its "master" (who, every cat owner knows, is actually the cat's servant), but rather because there's finally something worth chasing -- a live rat! Get that fuzzy catnip ball out of my face, I'm not in the mood.
As you may have noticed, the site has changed. Sampa, the free-site host, did a version 2 of some sort.
Despite an FAQ that made it sound like allowing one's site to go through v.2 surgery would be okay, there were several flexibilities that surprisingly disappeared with the click of a button. (e.g. I cannot believe sidebars like this one are even narrower than before.)
And I'm told -- miraculously! -- that the conversion cannot be undone. Truth be told, I'm actually quite pissed. But free is free. Sampa has otherwise been good to me.
So I need to sort through site "features" to see how I can make do. Except that I don't have the time at the moment, in the middle of graduate classes and Lighthousehockey.com. (btw, I've removed that Lighthouse RSS feed so that you're not clogged with random Islanders hockey gibberish).
But I promise to touch up the accessories when I get a chance, and return to irregularly scheduled blogging.
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. They were getting together for a 20-year reunion, and they had some cool stories and thoughts to share.
But I'm also motivated by an unnatural affection for the Islanders.
February, 2008