We have needs. We have to eat. Where to go. Someone decided we were going to "New York, New York." here's a picture of the hotel. It's a miniature Manhattan skyline, complete with the statue of liberty.
Parking is free everywhere you go on the strip. Valley Parking is free as well. You tip the guy a buck when you leave the car, tip him a buck when he brings it back. OK, it's not free, but it's very convenient.
Once inside New York, NY, we were very surpised to see once again...ANOTHER casino! Notice the New York Skyline. The shops in the mall area were made to look like you were walking down the street in the city. (but nicer)
Here is the restaurant we ate at. Called, as you can see "America." Pretty good food.
This was on the wall behind us. A map of the whole U.S. with little icons representing each region. I couldn't fit the whole thing in one shot. Sorry.
For some reason, we had on-going "bets" all week. I think Kimsu started this one. "Eric, for $5 drink this whole container of green chunky salsa." A few others threw another $10 into the pot. He did it, but he said it ruined his dinner.
Where else can you go from New York to Paris in just a few steps? Only in Vegas, I guess.
I can't remember where this was (can someone help me?). It reminded me of the mummer's parade, excpet there where not floats. Everything was made out of flowers. Pretty creative.
Thanks to my friend Jason who pointed this out and sent this highlighted picture, I have learned that I appear on Apple's web site. How cool is that? This is a picture of Tim and me trying to connect to the internet in the "Apple Lounge." All we could do was connect to the router, but the internet was down. Dumb.
Anyway, for those of you keeping score at home, this is my 100th post. Kind of pathetic since I've been running this for about a year and a half.
Some of the things on display at NAB are things like helicopters, TV news trucks, big satellite dishes, and a big ultra-def theater. But my favorite thing was the sports truck. All the gear is actually in a trailer. It's the truck that shows up at a sporting event that is a self-contained television studio. Baseball games are broadcast this way, as well as football, hockey, you name it. This particular trailer was evidently most recently used for golf.
If you've ever taken the time to watch golf on TV, you may have noticed that as soon as you watch one guy put a ball in, they immediately take you to someone else on the tee, then to someone else in the fairway, then, someone else getting out of the bunker.
This is all monitored and scheduled for broadcast in this truck. It was kept very cool, by the way...
Tim may be the only person I know of who could actually sit down and know how to run this stuff. Don't worry, he's just pretending!
Here are all the preview monitors.
This is the audio mixing desk. The mixer was actually able to monitor and mix in 5.1 surround. Ahead of him (out of the frame) is a window that allows him to look into the main room where the producer/director sits.
On Wednesday, Tim and I met up with Neil who wanted to see an IPTV presentation. He is doing work on that at his company and so he wanted to see how other companies are using the technology.
So let me try to help set the stage. Most of the people who attended this tech conference were men. But many of the presenters were young, attractive women. I had no idea so many women were involved in the tech industry. Well, I'm a little slow.
This young lady is giving this slick presentation. She is representing a company who provides content and servers to companies like Time Warner, or Bellsouth. Companies that can combine content and on demand TV, telephone, internet, and wireless. The idea is that you may be sitting in your living room watching something but then need to leave to go somewhere. Using your mobile device, you can pick up where you were in your living room and continue to watch the show on your hand held. Pretty nifty. The presenter was going through this, showing simultaneous broadcasts of msnbc on both the large screen and the PDA.
I was intrigued by this, and after the presentation I began asking Neil a lot of questions about it. So he asked the presenter if we could see the PDA. We wanted to know if it was proprietary. It turns out it was, though it was running the microsoft handheld OS. I wanted to see it stream the video to it and see what other channels were available. "Sure," she said, handing me the device. "Let me know if I can answer anything for you."
So I started playing with it. I didn't want to just watch msnbc so I pushed a button that I thought would take me to a menu to view other channels. Oops. I did something. Couldn't get the channels back. I wasn't too worried, she obviously knew what she was talking about, she could reset it for her next presentation.
Oops, the device is in French (just like the GPS display on Chuck's rental, but that's another story), and she doesn't have any idea how to fix it. She plays with it for a while and as it becomes more and more obvious that she can't navigate the device any better than I can, some things come out about her.
It turns out she's just the face for the company at that presentation. She really didn't know anything about the product, what it did, how it worked or anything. She was slick, she pushed the remote at the right time, navigated the menu correctly, but outside of the presentation she was clueless. In fact, she had a little cassette recorder with an earpiece in one of her ears that actually had a recording of someone reading the script. She just repeated it to everyone. So she was about a second behind what she heard on the tape and had the ability to stop it and start it as she needed. She said that they had just completed the script two days before the show started and didn't have enough time to memorize it.
As I thought back to other presentations I saw, it began to make sense. All the smart tech guys were there to answer your detailed questions about the product, and interact with other geeks, but many of the presenters were not only not with the company, they probably didn't even know half of what the stuff they were presenting did! (In most cases, we didn't really mind).
I know, I'm behind on my posts. As I have mentioned, my internet options are very limited. It is so unbelievable, and ironic, even, that the one place where the greatest concentration of tech minds are gathered, internet is scarce or unavailable all together. But don't get me started. I'm paying $10.99 for a 24 hour internet connection right now so I'm squeezing in all I can. We leave for home tomorrow, my internet runs out in about an hour, so I'm going to try to get this post off before I run out of time!
We flew in on Saturday night, technically that was day 1. Sunday was our first full day, however, so day 2 was Tuesday and here are some pictures and commentary of places we went, ate, and explored. Janet's probably right, people like pictures, so here are some pictures...
Where we ate Monday night.
A picture of something, not sure what, on the strip.
It is really hard to describe how big this thing is. For anyone who has ever been to the LV Convention Center, you will have a pretty good idea when I tell you that it consumes the North, Central, South lower and South upper Halls, plus the Hilton across the parking lot, where I believe a few keynotes and things like that are being delivered.
We started off the day heading straight for the Apple display, where they were demoing the release of Final Cut 2. A very impressive demonstration of the power and intuition of the video editing software. Actually, they've bundled several software items into that one package so it's pretty impressive. The rest of the day was spent watching a few demos of various software and hardware products from companies such as Sony, Panasonic, JVC, etc. High Def stuff, displays, cameras, it's all kind of overload. At lunch, after having wondered around for a while by myself, Tim asked me what I thought. I answered that I was somewhere between overwhelmed and bored.
The Apple Final Cut 2 Presentation
Neil's jaw was perpetually dropped open as cool new feature after feature was revealed.
We are here as a team primarily to research SAN server information so that we can hopefully set up a high capacity video editing server that can be shared over fiber and edited on several work stations. It has been very interesting to be on a lot of these conversations of discovery and planning. I've learned a lot so far.
These pictures were taken on the stairs halfway between the upper and lower South Halls. One, looking left, one looking right. I can't even show the full size of the hall with these shots. Take what you see and multiply it by four, plus some things outside, which I'll show tomorrow.
Here are some things I didn't know about Hoover Dam:
It is 760 feet tall.
It straddles the boarder of Nevada and Arizona.
It was built during the depression.
It has smaller generators that provide the power needed to run the dam itself.
Ninety-Six people "officially" died while building the dam. Those were official government numbers of people who died on site. The distinction is important since those (in the hundreds) who died in the ambulence or at the hospital later on were not counted in the official government numbers, nor were their families awarded government compensation for their losses.
It provides electricity for parts of California, Arizona, and Nevada.
Where we were in the generator room, behind us, there was 450 feet of concrete between us and Lake Mead at a depth of 300 feet! Here the guys are looking at some fish in the lake.
Part of the reason for coming to Las Vegas the day before the NAB show started was to have an opportunity to go to a church. The cool thing was that we had [almost] our whole music programming and media staff with us (we had to leave some behind to run the ship! (thanks Mike and Nathan!)
The church we decided to go to is a larger church by attendance. The Church's name is Central Christian. It is located off a major highway and finding it didn't seem to present too many problems. We were able to go to first time visitor's parking right up by the building. It looked like regular attenders had to park in the "dust" parking lot, which was really just a cleared dirt area. There's plenty of dirt here.
The service began about ten to fifteen minutes ahead of the scheduled start time with a couple of praise songs led by the worship band. The band featured a leader playing acoustic, an electric lead, an electric rhythm player, a bass player, drummer, B-3/keyboard guy (who also doubled as a vocalist), a "front" female (soprano), plus to "back" vocals, two guys and another girl, who was covering alto. So all together, there were four guys and two girls, vocally.
From a technical standpoint, the look was outstanding. It should come as no surprise that a church in the Las Vegas area who wants to push the presentation envelop not only has plenty of resources to draw from in terms of expertise, but also is uniquely aware of what is possible. Walking into the room, you're greeted with a techno-idustrial look, house lights way down, a blue look on the stage, and a sense that something was about to happen.
The house presentation featured four front screens. Two on the off-stage outside provided I-mag and song lyric content, while the screens on the stage in the background provided visual effects, complemented by the LED display installed in symmetrical fashion in the back ground. The visual coordination and feel and look of the stage was nice.
One of the things that frustrate many churches is the ability to mix sound in a large room. This room was no exception. From what I remember, there was a great deal of low end, which is great. There was plenty of bass, but as you continued on up the frequency spectrum, the clarity diminished severely. The lead voice was always pushed out front, but secondary voices were hard to pick out. We watched all morning as the B-3 player worked and worked on his instrument, but we never once heard it. OK--I heard it once. Literally, once.
The players were having a great time, they were all connected musically to one another by IEMs which meant that they each probably had the sound in their ears exactly the way they wanted it.
So the "sermon" was presented as an interview between the senior pastor and someone I had never heard of, "Dog, the Bounty Hunter." He apparently has a big show on A&E where he, as a former felon, is tasked with hunting down other wanted criminals.
He came across as being somewhere between a WWF wrestler and a NFL running back. Cocky, self-assured, but articulate, a good story teller, and larger than life. He conveyed to all of us from Providence a vague understanding of God. He did this by acknowledging any good thing that happened in his life seemed accidental or fortuitous at best, as being directed by God somehow--with the help of his "crazy" praying, Christian mother.
What frustrated me was that the pastor did nothing to steer the conversation toward Christ. We brought our Bibles, but never once cracked them open, even the music, as slick as it was, tended toward pronoun-centricity, never rich with theology, never a hint, really, of theology. Here was a church who had thousands of people attend over five weekend services, and they all heard exactly the same thing: God (or the big guy upstairs, as "Dog" referred to him) has got your back.
When the interview was over, and the guest accepted the cheers and adoration of the "congregation," there came from the senior pastor an inexplicable offer to pray a prayer of salvation by repeating after him. There was no context for it, it just seemed perfunctory and out of no where.
So here's the question: Is this all a problem? Really?
The lady beside me repeated after the pastor to receive Christ. Did she? Who did she come for? "Dog," or Christ? Is it ok to lure the entertainment-centric Vegas community in with something fun to then say, "oh yeah, don't forget about Jesus...?"
Can we use any means possible to bring people into a church, entertain them, show them a glimpse of Christ, then hope they desire it for some reason, and plead with them after they've shown interest to join a small group where they'll really grow?
Are we comfortable in saying that we need a guy like "Dog the Bounty Hunter" to show up at our church because we don't believe the gospel alone is sufficient enough nor powerful enough to attract people?
What am I doing in Las Vegas? NAB. But along the way, we're checking out a few other cool things.
Immediately off the plane, we were greeted with the most common thing seen around here. This is right inside the gate!
I wondered around the casino in the hotel we're staying in and tried to figure out the roulette table. I saw a great deal of money exchanging hands, mostly in the form of chips. The chips represented a dollar each. We're not staying in a high-stakes hotel. However, I saw one guy drop two Ben Franklin's on Red. $200 in the hopes that the little ball would end up on something red, not black or green. It landed on black. He lost $200. Sorry.
I watched another guy feed a $100 bill into a $0.25 slot machine. I thought to myself, "oh, this oughta last for a while."
He was done in less than 90 seconds. Apparently, you can bet in several multiples of the original twenty-five cents, as well as all sorts of variations related to which line everything will stop on. Kinda weird.
As far as the city, it's odd. Surrounded by mountains, clearly in the desert, it seems a bit out of place. I thought it was interesting how the pyramid hotel, the one with the light shining out of the top of it straight up into the sky can be seen from just about anywhere in the area (I know, that's the whole idea!) I took a picture of the light, kinda cool.
Oh, and the stretch hummer. That was here at our hotel.
More will be coming as I get a chance. I am surprised and fairly disappointed with our hotel. It's like staying at an airport. And it's one of the least expensive ones around. I heard it's like a ghetto compared to some of the other high-end casino/hotels here. You not only pay for everything, you pay extra for everything. Two big examples: There is a safe in our room. Nice, right? Well, you have to put two quarters in per use. What?
Second: Internet access. Wireless? Oh yeah, it's there, nice and strong signal, but what? We have to pay $10.99 per 24 hour period for the privilege to us it. I haven't given in to that yet. I am using a free Wifi louge here at the convention center. More on that later....
Oh...and another thing...I had been planning on visiting the local Y here for my work outs. Good plan, right, well, I found out that there's an exercies room at our hotel. So, I go take a look at it. Yeah, it will do, reasonable amount of equipment, I'll use it instead of driving around and trying to find the Y. But wait. It costs $5 extra to use. What? OK, so I decided to bite the proverbial bullet and go use it. You have to go to the front desk in the morning to get the key (card) for the room. So here I am at the front desk at 6:15 AM, asking for the key.
"oh, it doesn't open until 7:30." WHAT? Dumb. I'll be at the Y tomorrow morning!
I got a pretty good view of the ceremony from my spot at the piano. Nice ceremony, they held it together, and Chip did a great job as well. I don't think I've ever been a part of a wedding where the bridal party was so huge! I had to play while eight girls came down the isle. Fortunately, it was a small auditorium so it didn't take them too long!
Congratulations to Travis and Katherine who are honeymooning in Ireland!
On Wednesdays I do a chest workout. I end by doing three sets of push ups to failure. That isn't important, but you should know this is why I overheard the following conversation. (While I was resting, and resting, and resting....)
Next to me, on a floor mat was a woman, mid-late 40's, I guess, stretching and contorting in some crazy fashion after pilates or yoga or some combination thereof. An acquaintance of hers, on the other end of the exercise mat asked her this:
"So do you miss teaching at State?" Yoga woman: "I didn't at first but I've been missing it more and more lately." Friend: "Are you a doctor?" Yoga woman: "I have my Ph. D., yeah." Friend: "What's it in?" Yoga woman: "Thermodynamics"
So I haven't been able to get that conversation out of my mind. I wonder what it would be like to have a Ph. D. and then, for some reason, decide not to use it. It sounded like she took some time off (several years) to be with her kids while they were young.
I sometimes think about getting a Ph. D. but for me it would likely be more for the experience and growth rather than actually using it the way most people do. Both UNC and Duke offer Ph. D. degrees in musicology, but I'm scared to death of the language requirements. (German or French just to get in, plus two other languages by completion (Italian, German/French, Latin)). The actual course work would probably seem easy compared to the languages.
A Composition degree doesn't really interest me. The admission requirements are difficult, as they should be, and though I enjoy trying out an orchestration every once in a while, my passion is not composition.
The other question of earning another degree is the "what for" question. I want to learn more, and I guess if I'm going to go to the trouble I might as well earn something along the way. Oh, maybe some day.
Here are some pictures of the new van. Nothing fancy, and actually, nothing new, just new to us.
And yes, I've checked, rust is at a minimum on this thing. The shock towers look great as well as the body, a scratch here or there, nothing major, but no evidence of rust. So, no bells and whistles, just a regular, hopefully reliable van that will last us another 100,000 miles or more!
Nothing, right? Looks like a 1996 Grand Caravan in reasonable shape, but there are problems. Two big problems under the hood.
I didn't know what a shock tower was until I had two mechanics in the last year tell me that the rust is really bad on this van and that I should really consider getting rid of it "in the next year." What?
I figured these guys were not used to seeing Ohio rust. But this was an exceptional rust job! The shock towers house the shocks and springs. The shock is bolted to the top of the tower and the whole weight of the van rests on the shocks and the springs. Of course, the shocks are supposed to absorb the impact of uneven roads and along the help of the springs.
So anyway, the rust is eating away at the top of the towers. This, as you can imagine will be problematic soon as eventually, the steel will give way, the springs will pop through the top of the tower, and the van will be crippled, probably worthless.
So we made an upgrade. Remembering our experience with a certain Previa that got us to 352,000 miles, we went back to Toyota, with the purchase of a Sienna (sorry, no picture!)
I walked into my office on Sunday morning to the sound of all five (or more?) fans on my G5 up at full speed. That is not a good sign. Usually this means the computer was reset for some reason--probably due to a power outage. Sure enough, there was a fire that effected several thousand people Friday night. All I remember seeing was a flicker, but I live on the other side of town.
Anyway, rebooting the computer did nothing. It gave me the usual Mac startup sound, but then nothing. Like it was stuck in neutral. No hard drive noise, no display at all. Nothing. I shut it down and tried it again, and again, and again.
On Monday I took it to the Mac store (thankfully just up the street) but the warranty had expired so to my surprise, the guy behind the desk suggested I try an authorized Apple tech in town that would save me some money over using the Apple repair.
So that's where I took it. They diagonised the issue as a faulty video card. I should have my computer tomorrow.
BUT--the thing that saved me was an external hard drive. Not just the hard drive but a little software program called SuperDuper. Months ago I set it to backup my internal hard drive. After making an initial backup of everything on the drive, every night around 11:00pm it backs up anything from the day that had changed or had been added. This keeps it very current and keeps the backup fairly short.
So, the very last chart I edited, pdf I ran off, mp3 I added on Thursday was backed up and available for me. All I had to do was plug the drive into my laptop and everything I needed was there.
The only thing I couldn't do was create charts. I didn't take the time to try to configure this computer for the midi and keyboard settings, plus, even though I had access to Finale, I could not use it to print or save since two instances of it had already been registered on two different computers.
So friends, take my advice, even though it appears my hard drive is ok, I've been without my computer all week, but not my data! It could have been a lot worse.
I spent a good portion of this afternoon trying to be clever. It turns out, I'm not so clever.
Have you ever noticed the little icons in the location line you your browser? It's called a "favicon." The blogger template kind of comes with one, but I decided to try to put my own up there.
After digging around, I found a simple little graphics editor/creator for OS X, and I made this little icon on the right. A little more research revealed that this little icon (a favicon.ico file) is a 16X16 bit file in 4 bit colors. This means that it would not be a matter of simply reducing my original icon, but the colors would never work as well, since they are out of the scope of 16 bit colors.
So I downloaded "graphics converter" and tried to create a little 16X16 version of what you see above. It ended up looking ok, but then I couldn't get blogger to read it and incorporate it. I used code I found from a website, but as you can see, all I get is a "can't fine this file" icon. (At least that's what it looks like in Firefox).
So how does MLB.com do it? They have red white and blue (basic colors), but the resolution seems much greater than 16 bits. What about the Apple favicon? It has smooth rounded edges. I'm starting to think that the whole 16 bit thing isn't really true.
There's a show on CBS that I began watching a few weeks ago. It's called Shark. It's about a LA (where else?) DA who specializes in solving high-profile criminal cases. I've maybe seen four or five episodes. There is a clear and unfortunately, predictable formula that is emerging. Viewers of this will know what I'm talking about.
A crime is committed. This is usually a murder. We only see glimpses and flashes. It's never clear exactly what happened, but we know it can't be good.
Shark, the DA, who has no life, immediately appears on the crime scene, talks fast, barks orders, and returns home where he struggles to have a relationship with his almost-college-aged daughter.
Evidence starts to become clear. It points to Shark's initial hunch. Who's guilty? A spouse, usually. Things are going well. The trial starts but you know things are going a little too well. There is, after all, a half-hour left. Something has to go wrong. Sure enough,
something comes out of nowhere. It is usually an unexpected person, an unlikely piece of evidence, or a simple oversight on the part of the suave DA A-team. Totally disrupts the plan. It looks like the one we thought a minute a go was so going to jail is about to get off free. Is he really guilty?
But wait. Someone says something. Something that's maybe always been there but always overlooked comes to Shark's Holmes-like attention, and ah-ha, with 15 minutes left, he yells more orders to his team, go find out this, get someone to admit to this, stall this person and before you know it,
we're back in court in the closing scene, showing that Shark's instincts were right after all and presto-chango, original suspect goes to jail.
So what's the problem with this? A good mystery seems like it oughta supply the viewer (or reader) with all the necessary information up front, so that we can play along at home. This doesn't happen. We can guess at certain details to try to fill in the blanks, but there's no Matlock-like put-it-all-together at the end, only new material that of course would point to an obvious conclusion. I don't watch crime shows for some reason, and maybe this is why. This show, if it represents the popular genre, is far too tidy. One hour, crime committed, suspect nabbed, suspect almost gets off, DA discovers something (along with the viewers), back to the court room, suspect found guilty, DA makes a cleaver quip toward the unlikely chief DA, reconciles with his daughter in some sub-plot, and just like in real life, wraps it up in an hour.
I'm already board with it...I thought I once liked it. I guess my Thursday night TV viewing is just gonna be a half hour of 30 Rock. Maybe some Office too.
This is a picture-perfect reproduction of the Knight Industries 2000. Unfortunately, after all that money and man-hours, the gooey center is still an '80s F-Body. Canadian seller zapper80 has done an awesome job putting this car together, and claims a cost of over $40,000 CDN. For all of us kids of the 80's.
Patty[who is from Georgia]: Sheri, did you bring the peanuts? Brian[who is most definitely not from Georgia]: You like peanuts? Patty: Oh yes, Bob and I eat them all the time Brian: Do you buy them in the shell so you have to crack them out? Patty: Yeah, we like them that way. Brian: I LOVE peanuts--eat them a lot! (they're the perfect snack!) Patty: I like to eat them balled. Brian: Balled? Patty: Yeah, I really like them that way. Brian: Balled. I've never heard of that before. Balled? Patty: Yeah, you know, put them in hot water, then drain it and eat them. Brian: Oh, you mean "boiled?" Patty: Yeah, that's what I said, "balled." Brian: No, you said "balled." I've never heard of "Balling" something. I have, however heard of "boiling" something--though never peanuts. Patty: Well, "BOY-ALed" peanuts are good. Brian: Ok, I'll have to try them some time.
A very significant event happened today many years ago. It sent cultural shock waves around the country. It was an arrival anticipated like no other arrival. It had a profound musical impact on the nation, and really, the world. We have never been the same since. What happened on this day so many years ago? Click here to find out. (If you click on this link AFTER Feb 7, you'll have to follow the link then change the date to see what I'm talking about)
I recently registered our vehicles. On the form there was a little check box asking if we wanted to change our plates to a personalized plate. I've always ignored that check-box. But this time around, for some reason, I actually gave it some thought.
People often select cryptic plate ideas based on their own personal interests or skills. I just can't see myself being pretentious enough to drive down the street with a plate that reads "JAZZMAN" or "PIANOGUY." I would need something a little more geekish. Something that only others in the know would get.
North Carolina offers this site where you can type in your ideas and see if its been used by someone else. I checked, both "88 KEYS", "88 KEYZ", and "TRIBEFAN" are taken. But as I said, those aren't quite my style. It's tricky to fit your personality into just eight characters.
If I were to get personalized plates, I might choose from something a little more obtuse, like these (and they're all available):
I have two books I'm currently reading, and many in the queue. I've just gotten into Terry Pluto's Faith and You (thanks Rob!). A series of essays on daily life and perspective. Pluto is a sports writer for the Akron Beacon Journal, but came to know the Lord and now makes contributions to the religion section of the paper as well. He has great sources inside the Indian's and Brown's front office.
The other book I'm into is a book recommended to me by Bill. It's a book entitled Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069. The authors, Neil Howe and William Strauss show some very interesting data regarding generational cycles in America. They are not saying that you can see this in other countries, but they believe they have found a pattern of historical cycle that can act as an accurate predictor of what may lie ahead.
It's going to be hard to reproduce their chart, but as an example (I'll try),
Year Historical Example:
Year 0 1901-24
Year 22 1925-42
Year 44 1943-60
Year 66 1961-81
Elder Age 66-87
Progressive (Adaptive) sensitive
[Secular Crisis]
Missionary (Idealist) visionary
Lost (Reactive) reclusive
[Spiritual Awakening]
G.I. Civic (busy)
Midlife Age 44-65
Missionary (Idealist) moralistic
[Secular Crisis]
Lost (Reactive) pragmatic
G.I. (Civic) powerful
[Spiritual Awakening]
Silent (Adaptive) indecisive
Rising Age 22-43
Lost (Reactive) alienated
[Secular Crisis]
G.I. (Civic) heroic
Silent (Adaptive) conformist
[Spiritual Awakening]
Boom (Idealist) narcissistic
Youth Age 0-21
G.I. (Civic) protected
[Secular Crisis]
Silent (Adaptive) suffocated
Boom (Idealist) indulged
[Spiritual Awakening]
Thirteenth (Reactive) criticized
I've actually combined a few of their tables into this one. The years across the top are birth years, the far left column shows the ages. You should also understand this chart diagonally, rising from lower left to upper right as the people in the "generational cohorts" age together.
The interesting thing is, according to the author (and it would make sense) that each generation enters the same secular crisis or spiritual awakening at the same time, but at different points in their lives. The result is that they react differently to each one.
Here is a very interesting (at least to me) section of the book:
How can this cycle exist in a complicated world? To be sure, history has its good and bad surprises and accidents, its good and bad actors...Some would say instinctively that history is too cluttered to allow for our kind of cycle. But such a prejudice focuses too closely on events without sufficient attention to the response those events generate. It is the response that determines the social moment. Compare, for example, the American response to World War I and World War II. Both wars were preceded by aggressive foreign acts (the sinking of the Lusitania, the air attack on Pearl Harbor). In one case, Congress waited two years before declaring war; in the other case, it declared war the next day. In one case, the war helped propel divisive movements like Prohibition; in the other, the nation mobilized as a single organism. Both wars ended in a total victory-but in one case, soldiers came home to moral nagging and vice squads; in the other, they came home to ticker-tape parades. Both wars strengthened America's influence overseas-but in one case, that influence was quickly squandered; in the other, it was consolidated over the next two decades. Why? When a society is in the midst of a Crisis era, as America was in 1941, generational forces tend to congeal a secular crisis from whatever exogenous events arise...Indeed, the generational cycle has significantly influenced how Americans have acted during and after every major war in their history. Which wars occurred in comparable constellational moods? The Revolution and World War II (Crisis eras) The War of 1812 and Korea (Outer-Driver eras). The French and Indian War and World War I (Inner-Driven eras). What many historians consider the nation's most misguided wars, the Spanish-American and Vietnam--were waged druing the social turmoil of Awakening eras. These parallels are instructive. They suggest how fortunate America may have been that the world's hour of fascist peril came when it did, and not a quarter century earlier or later.
One of the crazy things about my developing interest in history is that it's really hard to know where to start. A few years ago, I was curious about how World War II started, so I did what any reasonably savvy computer user would do and checked out wikipedia and a few other Google searches. Almost every article or essay on the subject of the beginnings of World War II began with a statement something like this: "To fully understand the reasons for the start of the second World War, one must understand the reasons for the start of World War I, and the failure of the Treaty of Versailles.
Well, I knew little about World War II, I knew even less about World War I. So, I went on a little hunt, and found a great book: A Storm in Flanders. I've commented on this book before. I really found it very interesting, and as the war was, very depressing. This book focused on the Great War mostly from the European viewpoint, though the author's intent was to write it for Americans who knew little about the war.
Fleming's book, Illusion of Victory, focuses on America's involvement in the war, and primarily focuses on Woodrow Wilson's failure as president to guide the country into the war (after running for re-election with the slogan "He kept us out of war"), and his failure as diplomat as he asserted himself as an almost unwelcomed negotiator for peace on the European stage.
One of the most startling things I took from this book is how unbelievably deceptive and censoring the federal government became toward it's citizens. People live in a great deal of ignorance about the current conflict in Iraq (and I use the term "conflict" intentionally since the 2nd World War was technically the last war declared by the US). If more people had a better sense of history, (and I can say I only feel like I'm getting my bearings lately), they would be surprised at what the Wilson administration (and later the Roosevelt administration) sanctioned regarding propaganda, what we would consider political "incorrectness" today, and stubborn political unilateralism. If you weren't on board with Wilson, too bad, he was gonna do things the way he wanted them done.
As I am learning, the problem with history is that it is hard to know where to start. I have now gained a broader appreciation for the start of WW II because of understanding WW I a little better. However, there were world events that took place before WW I that influenced it! Many US military commanders of World War I got their experience from fighting in the Spanish-American War! Now who can tell me something about THAT?
This little blurb just came in an email to me on an account I rarely check. Does anyone else find this slightly ironic? Or am I just too cynical?
It used to be that you could sit down and watch an evening football game with your children without fear of them being exposed to inappropriate material. Sadly, that's no longer the case as was proven Saturday night during the Fox broadcast of the NFL playoff game between the New Orleans Saints and the Philadelphia Eagles.
During a cutaway shot to the stadium spectators, the camera focused directly on a woman wearing a t-shirt clearly inscribed with the words "F--k Da Eagles" (without the dashes). The shot stayed focused on the woman and her shirt for several seconds. There can be no doubt that this was an intentional airing of patently offensive language on the public airwaves, as the person wearing the profane t-shirt was chosen by Fox Network's broadcast crew from more than 70,000 spectators in the stadium. The camera operator selected that particular woman and the director and/or producers of the event made an affirmative and conscious decision to air the shot from that particular camera, forcing the f-word into millions of homes. Furthermore, the v-chip would not and could not have protected children and families from the type of content evidenced here.
To view the offensive scene, click here. WARNING – GRAPHIC CONTENT
Fans on the East Coast saw this obscenity televised during the Family Hour (8:30 p.m. ET) -- but it aired at 5:30 p.m. in the evening on the West Coast.
That was the content of the email. Weird. Call Fox now, by the way.
Parking is free everywhere you go on the strip. Valley Parking is free as well. You tip the guy a buck when you leave the car, tip him a buck when he brings it back. OK, it's not free, but it's very convenient.
Once inside New York, NY, we were very surpised to see once again...ANOTHER casino! Notice the New York Skyline. The shops in the mall area were made to look like you were walking down the street in the city. (but nicer)
Here is the restaurant we ate at. Called, as you can see "America." Pretty good food.
For some reason, we had on-going "bets" all week. I think Kimsu started this one. "Eric, for $5 drink this whole container of green chunky salsa." A few others threw another $10 into the pot. He did it, but he said it ruined his dinner.
Where else can you go from New York to Paris in just a few steps? Only in Vegas, I guess.
I can't remember where this was (can someone help me?). It reminded me of the mummer's parade, excpet there where not floats. Everything was made out of flowers. Pretty creative.
