Microsoft deletes Free and Open Souce references

At the UN summit on the Information Society, Microsoft removes references relating to Free and Open Software movements.

The Road to Hell

This prosilient piece of propaganda was left at my doorstep, undoubtedly by “caring and well-meaning” proselytizers. It also happens to be a superb example of what is meant by the proverb, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

As a point of reference, of the myriad of Christian cult collectives, the distributor of this vulgar solicitation happens to be Mormon—merely incidental.

To varying degrees, the vast majority of these religious orders have expended substantial resources in creating an unfathomable array of self-promotional products. From videos to DVD’s, the plethora of products currently available on the market is staggering. The average American could easily render himself financially indigent if he weren’t able to exercise some restraint—though there is no way to avoid the inherent irony that results from the marriage of morality to the salacious habits of modern commercialism.

Even so, this doesn’t account for all of the materials. The sum total of designed and packaged promotional products that are unabashedly pushed by these tautological tyrants should also include the “free of charge” materials whose costs are born entirely by the promoting sect, themselves. Regardless of how these things are funded, their existence speaks to question of what are the ethical implications of using funds for this purpose?

Far and away, the most common tactic, the favored method of selling this slant on subjectivity, is simple. They strap blatant unadulterated membership drives onto the backs of theological endeavors and make them an intrinsic element in their randomly selected and imposed set of cardinal precepts. This act of callous indecency is revolting and wholly incongruent with the definition of altruism. Under the scrutiny of ruthlessly comprehensive, non-biased examination, it is hard not to see them for what they really are, venomous vipers who serve their invidious ends, regardless of their predictable consequences.

The very process of inculcation historically connotes important sociological predictions, but for many of us it can be difficult to fully appreciate this sickening perfidy in the abstract. It helps to re-frame it in a more familiar context. Indeed, it is useful to see this issue from a more personal perspective, consider something more “day-to-day”, something that has a connection to the real world. For example, think of what a real difference it would make if the financial resources spent on the full panoply of solicitations produced by all these theological monsters were spent on doing something that made a real difference in the lives those who desperately need help—such as the obscene number of children who go hungry every day in the United States, to name just one.

In no way does this suggest that there aren’t legitimate expenses in the practical world essential to effectively form and operate eleemosynary organizations—not at all. Anyone who were to suggest otherwise is not a serious or credible advocate, but it is not an eye of a needle through which one may thread less transparent, questionable objectives. Equivocation in any instance of gravity is neither ethically neutral nor is it exceedingly clever.

It takes a community | modus vivendi

On my frequent forrays out into the world, I forget the huge contributions made by those who understand the importance of being a community. A community implies sharing and helping, and SourceForge.net, as a repository for Open Source community, is a remarkable product of that idea. Another is the phenominally successful member supported body of knowlege on the web is Wikipedia.

What's remarkable beyond the efforts it takes to support these entities is that they are in no way out-of-date or archaic. Today I needed more information on IP blocking program called Guardian 2. I found everything I needed and more through these two sites -- it blows me away how good they are.

Thank you to all of you out there who contribute to the keeping the spirit of community alive!

Sub Vero: Mr. Zappone burns up some cell minutes

If I remember correctly, the last time we chit-chatted was right before Mark took off for New York (quite possibly while he was jostling and lurching his way along one of the terminals at SEA-TAC) —on his way to see New York City Ballet's season-ending repertoire; more specifically to see friends, most notably his good friend and retired dancer, Peter Boal, who, as fate would have it, is now heading up the directors seat at Pacific NW Ballet (PNB) in Seattle. The official PNB press release in PDF (Adobe Portable Document Format) announcing Peter’s appointment to the director seat » www.pnb.org/company/peterboal.pdf

I don't know Peter, personally. To the best of my recollect, I’ve never met Peter, so I certainly don’t know if he knows how to run a company. One thing of which I am certain, now that he is about to take the helm, he and we are about to find out. In all sincerity, I do wish him luck, because what I do know about the job, it won’t be easy —and in this particular case, especially because he is following the formidable and legendary, Francia Russell, the former co-director of PNB along with her husband and choreographer, Kent Stowell —it’s this post Peter is about replace.

Without knowing either Kent or Francia, to encounter a statement in a fashion such as “Francia Russell is, to be sure, nothing short of a force of nature, like a hurricane …” would likely strike a sensible reader to be sensationally amusing but substantively nothing more than bloated fanciful hyperbole. Yet I can remember numerous instances in the past that I’ll bet others who also were there would probably say that such a description wouldn’t be an exaggeration in the least, and I venture to say that few might go further labeling it barely sufficient.

The reality is I cannot draw you a portrait of any reasonable accuracy within the confines of this blog’s entry. Suffice it to say, however, there a select few people at any given moment on the planet, after all the rhetoric and inflated PR has been stripped away, who actually are sublimely talented in what they have done and who have applied that talent to such a degree that it resulted in the achievements and the accolades passed on through the historical paper record, a record the merely hints at the magnitude of their true achievement.

Far too often this sort of compendium, commonly comprised of a sundry press releases and newspaper articles, is the product of far less talent minds and who had had no real first-hand knowledge of the event as they clank out the requisite flotsam on a computer screen, and quite predictably it will not convey the true essence of what had had occurred.

It may be that all histories suffer this to varying degrees but ballet history in particular seems to suffer a good deal more from such a plight, and much of the truth is either held away locked within the separate memories of their contemporaries, with paltry little that successfully escapes in some profoundly truthful way. For Francia Russell and her husband, Kent, both together but also separately for their respective individual achievements, this is that kind of story, a story I hope that will find a way to live beyond the official press releases and approved anecdotes, in the present and of the past.

Peter Boal will have the good fortune of taking the reins of a well-established company that is remarkably well-funded, with an equally well-developed rapport with the community, including an ancillary support network such as the respected ballet school system with studios situated on both sides of Lake Washington. This present day circumstance, this financially-sound arts organization, that grew from sub-standard rickety brick-faced studios inside an old nunnery planted in an older Seattle neighborhood known as Wallingford, is the direct result of the vision and Herculean effort of Francia and Kent, who began their directorship in 1977. I suppose if you can image the sheer amount of tenacity and fortitude it requires to even sustain an arts organization with any length of time and with any amount of respectable consistency, against a panoply of competing interests, all of whom have a better chance of tickling the fancy of the general public and consequently their pocketbook, then you can begin to get a glimpse of what an astonishing accomplishment this actually was.

It is only now as I look back to recant the fundamentals of this overture of this ballet company’s recent fascinating past, and through a perspective that extends beyond my own subjective interests, to where I began to glean a much wider perspective. Each of us, dancers, stage crew, lighting designers, costumers, we all have our stories to tell. Regardless of these tales, and reasons we each extol, and regardless of their historical accuracy, and regardless of numerous other people and factors directly associated with PNB history, at its core is the history of Francia and Kent’s phenomenal achievement – the singular force that produced the PNB you see now, whose studios are ensconced within the glittering glass walls of the Phelps center, which anchors one corner of the Seattle Center’s rejuvenation arts renaissance.

In terms of ballet in America, it is a success story that deserves special recognition given the fact that PNB, on many levels, is one of only a handful of peers, dance companies of acknowledged critical artistic merit to develop and exist outside the tacitly accepted dance Mecca -- New York City. The full span of Francia and Kent’s directorship began in 1977 and lasted through the end of the 2004 - 2005 Season, a story that began well before I had arrived in March of 1981 as an apprentice dancer and lasted well after my final curtain call at the Melbourne Arts festival of 1995.

Interwoven through my head were the thoughts that would become the fabric of this blog entry, while my conscientious attention was transfixed by the serendipity of that tenuous cellular conversation to my friend and lauded encomium costumer designer, Mark Zappone, the length of the connection held far longer than it originally promised, on his end in the vacuum sealed concourses of an airport to mine as it reverberates against the shadowed cave-like walls of my garage.

Mark’s history mirrors my own at PNB but moves simultaneously outside and well beyond it, and continues still, and by the nature of which it recedes from my own – and perhaps also explains why we talk, though not nearly with the same simpatico tenor, less frequently than we once had. We are worlds away on any given minute, veiled by a shroud of time that slowly stretches further and further back into the past, disrupted from time to time, by these lucid and enceinte moments to share these surrealistic disembodied meetings over the wireless.

A la prochaine fois, ma beiche!

Relatives From a Beautiful Land Down Under

Left to Right: Scott, Karen, Allison & Lauri

The Sun also sets on Waikiki

Where Kalakaua meets Kapahulu