Dennis Kucinich on A) Media Reform and B) How Bush is Scaring the Republicans

It wasn’t on the original schedule of the National Conference for Media Reform, but Dennis Kucinich agreed to hold a press conference tonight.  Kucinich ran for president of the United States in 2004.  He has indicated that he plans to run again in 2008.

I hadn’t ever before been to to a press conference of a presidential candidate.  I learned of it at the last minute.  I packed my press credentials (the media reform conference granted these to me on the basis of this blog), my video camera, a still camera, a pad of paper and a couple pens and dashed to the designated area.

In his prepared remarks, Kucinich pounced on the issue of media reform.  He demonstrated himself to be familiar with many aspects of media reform and the Internet.  In the not-too-distant future, he intends to hold Congressional hearings on media reform (“for an entire week, if necessary”).  He believes that media issues are among the most important issues facing this country today.  In response to a question I asked, Kucinich said he considers the media reform to be closely related to the possibility of campaign finance reform.  At the point when we have more of the former, he said, we will have the opportunity to implement the latter.  Campaign finance reform should take the form of public financing, he asserted.

He invited those attending to submit their ideas for issues to explore at his media reform hearings.  Foremost among those topics will be media ownership.  In …

Share

Continue ReadingDennis Kucinich on A) Media Reform and B) How Bush is Scaring the Republicans

National Conference for Media Reform – Opening events and talks

I am currently attending the National Conference for Media Reform at the downtown convention center in Memphis.  It’s pretty amazing to see and feel all this energy everywhere I look.  There will be in excess of 100 presentations. This is still the first day of the 2 1/2 day conference, yet I have already learned more than I can meaningfully absorb.   For more on all the things going on out here, go to freepress.net.

Simply understanding concepts is not what this conference is really about.  It’s about putting this understanding into action.  The organizers chose the following quote of Dr. Martin Luther King for the first page of the conference guide: “And nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power.” 

It is  media reform, in addition to being an important issue, an issue that inspires people to organize their strength into action?  Apparently so. This is the third time freepress.net has sponsored a national media conference.  The first conference drew 1,800 people to Madison, Wisconsin.  Last year, 2,200 people came to St. Louis.  This conference is being attended by the more than 3,000 people.  According to one of the speakers, the current issue of The Nation features an article advocating the reform of the corrupt mainstream media. You won’t find much about this conference or these topics in the mainstream media, however (correct me if I’m wrong).  That is not unexpected, given that the mainstream media is a constant target of criticism here. 

It’s …

Share

Continue ReadingNational Conference for Media Reform – Opening events and talks

Never assume that a woman is pregnant (and other lessons I’ve learned)

I have long known that one should never ever congratulate a woman for being pregnant unless one knows (really really knows) that she is happily pregnant. 

About seven years ago, my wife told me that one of the women living in our neighborhood was pregnant.  This surprised me, because I knew that Sally (not her real name) had told me that she had no interest in having children.

About an hour later, though, while I was walking about a neighborhood art fair, I saw Sally.  I walked up to talk with her.  I commented that we hadn’t seen each other for quite a few months.  She gestured toward her abdomen and stated “I’ve put on some weight since then.”  I had noticed that she had, indeed, gained considerable weight.  Therefore, I stated “Congratulations!”

She asked, “Congratulations about what?”

I instantly knew that I had broken a very basic rule and I was now paying for it.  Sally wasn’t pregnant.  I quickly mumbled something like “congratulations about this year’s art fair.”  Sally was a volunteer in charge of the art fair.  She looked at me as if I was acting strange, but then we talked a bit more before parting ways.

When I got home, I asked my wife how she knew that Sally was pregnant.  She said that one of the other neighbors had told her.  I had assumed that my wife had talked to Sally herself and learned about Sally’s pregnancy firsthand.  Instead, rumor had been turned into a …

Share

Continue ReadingNever assume that a woman is pregnant (and other lessons I’ve learned)

Raising a Wall Can Open a View

I visited 2 very different construction sites today, on a whim. Two sons of one of my clients each were working a different site, and we just went by to see what was going on.

The first site is a new 9-story office building in Clayton, MO, a financial center near the center of the country. The son was applying fireproofing to the steel structure, much like you may have seen in 9-11 WTC documentaries. It was fun to ride up the external cage elevator on a breezy January morning and watch concrete sprayed onto the steel, to take a look around, staring down the open elevator shafts and the stairwells still missing stairs, to feel the wind in an office building with just cables between me and the precipice.

Then we went to the other son’s site, where a 2 story residence was being constructed in an old neighborhood. We were just in time to help raise the first external wall up on the second story. I rarely do that, generally preferring the George Jetson style of gainful employment.

What, you might ask, does this have to do with politics and economy and faith? Try the notion of distance from an issue, of perspective. From the points of view I had today, I’d say the building trade is thriving. People are hard at work putting up new buildings all over. Compare this to the national housing starts (down). Were you aware that the Empire State Building was built during …

Share

Continue ReadingRaising a Wall Can Open a View

Learn by ignoring

About ten years ago, when I first started auditing graduate-level classes in cognitive science, I felt overwhelmed by the amount of information I needed to learn (I still do). The topics included such things as connectionism, evolutionary theory, artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy, neuroscience and education theory.  It felt like I was learning less and less about more and more to such an extent that I was eventually going to know nothing about everything.

One of the professors acknowledged the enormous scope and depth of the material.  He commented to me “it’s like trying to take a drink of water out of a fire hydrant.

That phrase stuck with me ever since.  It seems like I run into yet another entirely new overwhelming topic every few weeks.  It helps me to keep in mind that it’s often not supposed to be easy.  That’s why people spend much of their lives getting good at each of the many hundreds of disciplines.  There’s very few people that have command over more than a few of the numerous challenging fields out there.

That feeling of being overwhelmed while studying cognitive science reminded me that I felt the same way in my first year of law school.  If you did what many of the professors told you to do, you would be spending 18 hours every day reading material that would be largely unhelpful.  An alternative strategy that worked for me was to work hard to quickly determine what to ignore.  In law school, …

Share

Continue ReadingLearn by ignoring