Let's Talk Business

When you think of social websites, I have no doubt that what comes to mind is something like; some Ashley or Courtney prattling on about that cute boy in biology class; or Dude and Dude comparing Phish concert tapes. But take note—Facebook and MySpace have new competition within the cosmic constant of cybernation. A social network for business professionals, called LinkedIn, has just arrived for the career-minded, white collar camarilla. According to Dan Nye, the chief executive of LinkedIn, “We want to create a broad and critical business tool that is used by tens of millions of business professionals every day to make them better at what they do.” In other words—build a network.

Business networking is the process of establishing a beneficial relationship with other business people and potential clients and/or customers. The purpose is to increase business revenue. With this new site, people will be able to create and maintain online résumés and establish links with colleagues and acquaintances, then be able to expand their network through contacts. This career driven caucus doesn’t have time to waste with developing real relationships. It is too slow and too grueling: tennis, dinners, golf, charity balls, etc.

If you are not included in this sodality, you may have discerned how boring they may appear. Anton Chekhov said, “People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about.” Now there is no genetic trait that says a person is doomed to be boring. Perhaps their terms of reference make them that way. To me, business types tend to talk about themselves too much. If you are not in their club, you don’t exist. Have you ever been talked down to, because you work in the service industry?

The fact is—some of the smartest and most interesting people I have ever met were not rich business folk, but had normal working class jobs.

Now, let’s consider all the lying that is going to take place on this site. A survey entitled Manners and Behavior released by the website engage.com found that 30% of men and 19% of women believe telling white lies online is acceptable. And don’t forget that almost everyone involved in online dating is lying, just to get laid. Think what people will say to get ahead in the business world. I remember a cartoon, from my youth, where a retired British military officer told the most fantastic tales of heroism and bravery. In fact, so utterly fantastic as to be laughable. I can see it now, “Warren Buffet and I waved as our Gulfstreams passed at 50 thousand feet.”

There will also be a whole can of worms opened when business rivals start slandering each other, because now Internet providers as well as individual users can be liable for intentionally distributing defamatory information online. LinkedIn may find themselves busy policing their site to remove postings from chatrooms and message groups, whenever someone complains about a libelous statement made by a third party.

The 1st District Court of Appeals, in Barrett v. Rosenthal, AO96451, disagreed with the decision of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Zeron v. America Online Inc., 129 F.3rd 327. In that case, a federal three-judge panel dismissed a plaintiffs complaint that AOL did nothing to stop an unidentified third party who maliciously posted messages on an AOL bulletin advertising offensive T-shirts and listing the plaintiff’s home phone number.

Ouch! Lying in cyberspace just got riskier.

One more thing to look out for: the résumé. In 2004, the federal Government Accountability Office released a report that found that at least 28 senior-level federal workers had claimed degrees from diploma mills and other unaccredited schools. It doesn’t take much imagination, to wonder what hyperbolical embellishments will appear in this new network.

The Humpty-Dumpty Complex

It’s time to usher in the eggheads.

This is what Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has announced with a proactive plan to recruit social scientists, and a brain trust of economists and scholars, to help combat our security threats. The Pentagon has regularly financed Research and Development for science and engineering. Now it’s the social sciences and humanities (those two concepts that make all engineering students cringe) turn.

Cooperation between universities and the Pentagon has a long history of contention, because of the instinctive unease among scholars cooperating with the government. This conceivably, could be due to the nature of protecting independence and quality.

According to Mr. Gates, “The key principle of all components,” of this undertaking, “will be complete openness and rigid adherence to academic freedom and integrity. We are interested in furthering our knowledge of these issues and in soliciting diverse points of view, regardless of whether those views are critical of the department’s efforts.” Let’s hope this is true. What we don’t need, is another think tank.

A think tank is an organization, institute or corporation that engages in advocacy in areas such as social science. They mostly tend to concentrate on the affairs of political strategy, economy, technology and industrial or business policies. Don’t forget- also military issues. Unfortunately they have become little more than public relations fronts. They are experts at spinning webs of self-serving scholarship which serve the needs of the advocacy goals of their sponsors.

I like the idea of our leaders surrounding themselves with smart people, as long as they are impartial and listened to. Of course if you surround yourself with people saying what you want to hear, then it serves a nefarious function. The term kitchen cabinet, the popular name for a group of intimate, unofficial advisors, originated during the term of President Andrew Jackson. There can be good and bad kitchen cabinets, depending on your political views. Ronald Reagan had a kitchen cabinet of allies and friends from California who advised him during his terms. Clark Clifford was considered a member of the kitchen cabinet for John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, before becoming Secretary of Defense. Robert Kennedy was considered part of his brother’s kitchen cabinet while also being a member of the Cabinet as Attorney General.

Now even a better idea is what is referred to as a brain trust. This is a group of experts who serve, usually unofficially, as advisors and policy planners, or a group of experts gathered to discuss issues informally in public. Franklin Roosevelt had such a group of advisors. They presented Roosevelt with analysis of national social and economic problems and helped him devise public-policy solutions.

Barak Obama seems to be taking a cue from Roosevelt’s play book. He is already starting to surround himself with smart people. This includes a Swahili-speaking Air Force general, a 30-year-old speechwriter who helped draft the final report from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, and President Clinton’s first national security advisor. Whether they will turn out to be a kitchen cabinet or a brain trust is only speculation at this time. I’m hoping for the later.

So now, let’s get back to Secretary Gates’ plan. Here are a few things that these scholars might be able to help with-

1. Specific expert advisory groups, committees and roundtables.
2. Critiquing and providing intellectual rigor to department responses to various discussion papers, position papers and reviews.
3. Advice on research and policy issues currently affecting the department.
4. Assistance and advice on the rigor of planned research and evaluation.
5. Assistance with the scope and design of research projects planned to assess the impact of various programs and policies within the department’s reform agenda.
6. Provision of advice on the use of current data base holdings for secondary analysis and conduct of analysis using existing data where appropriate.

Remember, Humpty-Dumpty was the biggest egghead of them all, and we know what happened to him. So best of luck, Mr. Secretary.

It Isn't Over Till The Skinny Chick Sings!

There is something funny happening in Opera these days; the slimming down of sopranos. The 47-year old American, Deborah Voigt, was recently fired by the Royal Opera House for being too fat. Now, I want to make this clear, Deborah is known for her Wagnerian roles. You know- the ones famous for the coining of the term it isn’t over till the fat lady sings. Apparently, the singers’ appearance has become more important than the voice.

Ms. Voigt has just started her comeback, after losing 120 pounds as a result of gastric-bypass surgery. There was a time when the casting for an operatic production was done on the merits of the quality of the voice and not the singer’s physique and beauty.

In March of 2005, Jennifer Wilson burst onto the international scene by understudying for Jane Eaglen as Brünnhilde in Wagner’s five hour Götterdämmerung, just a day after singing the same character in a rehearsal of Die Walküre. This was an athletic feat, not only for the voice, but also for the physical stamina involved. She has, what could be described as a big-voice. Also you could say, she had the “goods.” Unfortunately, American vocal training favors lighter, flexible voices with a wide range. But opera has traditionally relied for it’s survival on the powerful, concert-hall filling voices.

Segway into: the microphone.

The coordination of lungs and diaphragm, and the proper use of breath, which are the fundamental prerequisites for sustaining powerful voices in huge auditoriums, are no longer required. As Deborah Voigt said, “I’m hoping that we don’t go so far as to put microphones on soubrette sopranos and have them singing Isolde.”

Now we have to take into account that bigger voices take longer to mature. By the time they do, many of those that possess them are 35 years or older. In other words, they are no longer the “Hot Babes” of opera; the ones that sell CD’s like Cecilia Bartoli. Speight Jenkins of the Seattle Opera said, “Voice teachers in general do not encourage the unique, original voice.” Instead, they encourage “the voice that can hit all the notes and do what is supposed to be done,” regardless if they have any flair or artistry.

So now we have singers with attractive bodies, and light, agile voices. Quick fame, like we have with American Idol, is the way to go. OK, so you just had dinner and you have to sit through an opera. So who wouldn’t rather watch a “hot babe” perform a virtuosic aria from Mozart’s Abduction From the Seraglio, instead of that “huge chick” belting out five hours worth of schnapps and sausage music.

This shift towards “popera”, with the use of microphones and pretty girls is starting to blend the genres of Broadway and Opera. Will we be seeing Sarah Brightman singing “Dich, teure Halle” from Wagner’s Tannhäuser, on 42nd street next season?

So Deborah Voigt is back now, in her slimmed down version. But will the voice be the same? ''I think that the face of opera is changing,'' Voigt said. ''To assume that one can weigh 300-plus pounds and still be viable on today's opera stage is naive.” But as they say, it isn’t over till the skinny chick sings.

Beam Me Up Jesus!

I received an e-mail yesterday from a friend with a link to a web page. At first, I thought it was a joke, but at closer inspection, I realized it was real. How many times have you thought that when you have seen it all, another surprise is just around the corner to upset your perceived harmony among irrational impulses?

Well, here it is: Post Rapture Pets.

Those who are taken up in the rapture (this is when Jesus beams you up) will be safe in the arms of God; but what about the pets we love and care for?

The web page tells you that, by buying their book, you too can make sure that little Fluffy won’t be plagued by the demonic savages of the post-rapture. This apparently is another, in a long line of Rapture books, and we know how many millions of people and millions of dollars have been made by Tim LeHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

In the fundamentalist Christian eschatology, the Rapture is the moment in which they believe that Jesus will descend from Heaven, accompanied by his posse, whose bodies (rotting corpses I presume) are reunited with their spirits in a resurrection. Just imagine bodies popping out of the ground. Does that remind you of anything? How about- Night of the Living Dead. Immediately after this all “true” Christians (meaning fundamentalist Protestants, not Catholics, etc.) alive on the earth are simultaneously transported to meet the Lord.

The Left Behind books are popular apocalyptic thrillers in which Jesus returns to slaughter everyone who is not a born-again Christian. The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof said, “If Saudi Arabians wrote an Islamic version of this series, we would furiously demand that sensible Muslims repudiate such hatemongering.” Even the conservative theologian Barbara R. Rossing, an associate professor of New Testament studies at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, and who received her doctorate from the Harvard Divinity School, said “Today’s Christian fixation on Armageddon and war is a sickness even while it may be thrilling and entertaining.”

What this fear mongering really does, is to control people through fear- plain and simple. And don’t forget, that societies (this includes religious societies) living in fear are no longer functioning to their full potential. Fear is crippling to productivity, confidence and mental serenity. So the “Flock” is best managed through fear. There will always be some cause for fear created by those in power to keep followers in line.

This is why, rather than confidently laying out a positive program of beliefs (like traditional denominations do); fundamentalism is more concerned with raising alarm over putative dangers lying in wait.

Now my family has a rich spiritual history that includes The Catholic Church, Protestantism, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Buddhism and Atheism. Perhaps my spiritual view of the world has amalgamated positions from all of these and more, which is why my wife and I are about to start attending the Universalist-Unitarian Church here in Athens. My spiritual enlightenment can also come from a variety of other sources. In fact, I relish what Yoda of Star Wars says about this issue, “Fear is the path to the dark side: fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”

Oh, and by the way, if you buy anything from links on the Post Rapture Pets page, Enoch will get a small percentage of the price. I just hope that a portion of these proceeds are going into a Trust for Fluffy.

Renaissance Fair?

Well it’s that time of year again, to slip on your favorite woolen clothing, with undergarments made of linen, and head off to the nearest Renaissance Fair. Yes, I’m talking about those ubiquitous flea markets plumed in cap and bells. And for those who are greatly experienced in costumery (from all those science fiction conventions), break out the hose and jacket with pleating or skirting, or the tunic with a surcoat. Women don’t forget your flowing gowns and elaborate headwear, ranging from headdresses shaped like hearts or butterflies to tall steeple caps.

For those of you unversed in fair punctilio, I suggest that you scour your closet and attic for the following:

1. Natural leather shoes, boots, and sandals.
2. Blowsy shirts in natural colors.
3. Natural leather vests.
4. Blowsy dresses in natural colors.
5. Snug fitting pants without pockets if possible

In other words, break out the old hippie stuff!

Now, when you show up, here’s what you’ll encounter: a replica of a formed small community, supposedly around a central lord or master. Not unlike the real thing, which were isolated, with occasional visits from peddlers, pilgrims on their way to the Crusades, or soldiers from other fiefdoms (who would practice their jousting skills with each other). There was no electricity, no water from faucets, no television, and no cars.

This is the Renaissance Fair experience- partly a craft fair, partly historical reenactment, and partly performance art.

But wait!

I want to know which idiot came up with the name, because if you know anything about history, everything I have just been describing can be referred to as: The Middle Ages. And as we all know (at least those who care about history), the Renaissance Period comes after the Middle Ages.

The Middle Ages are commonly dated from the fall of the Western Roman Empire (5th century) to the beginning of the Renaissance. This new modern period , lasted from around 1400 to 1500 A.D. It was a time that saw the birth of Humanism, a search for knowledge rather than accepting what already exists, and a faith in the republican ideal. In the arts it produced the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael Sanzio, and Michelangelo Buonarotti (not “Theater in the Mud”) (Face it; it’s your favorite part of the fair).

I don’t believe that thinkers like Galileo (mathematics and astronomy), Nicolaus Copernicus (astronomy), Tycho Brahe (astronomy), Johannes Kepler (mathematics and astronomy) and Isaac Newton (astronomy, physics, and mathematics), walked around peddling turkey drumsticks or replica swords.

But I do believe that their contribution to science was the foundation for modern science and technology, which eventually brought out the possibility of space travel and all of the ancillary science fiction, including the sci-fi conventions where you can really express yourself via costume. By the way, some of the alien creations that I have seen at these conventions could put a Hollywood makeup/wardrobe artist to shame.

The Musicology of Rage

The orgy of fury,
Compels us to
Pule the dying days,
Make our moans to a
Crepuscular address,
With neutral contempt.


Take no pity of us,
Or aggravate our
Hemorrhaging elixir.
But give us festering language,
That is frugal and
Will embalm our orthodoxy.

Recommended Poets

As someone once said, “I really want a poem to spout roses and spit bullets.” I agree. It’s no wonder that one of my favorite songs from a while ago was Send Lawyers, Guns and Money by Warren Zevon.

Now I'm hiding in Honduras
I'm a desperate man
Send lawyers, guns and money
The shit has hit the fan

So what constitutes a good poem? For me, it is something that says more in a few words than a novel can in five hundred pages, with wit and word-play. It has an extraordinary mixing of music and image, word and thought. The job of the poet is to choose the right words, not only for sound (the music of poignant language) and connotation (landscape), but even for the countenance of them.

The poem corresponds to a centrifuge of sound, alliteration and rhythm. The reader will be walking into a world for the very first time; a world of terseness and parsimony.

Poetry IS about words!

Another person also said, “What makes a good poem? A good poet.”

So I have two great poets for you to discover this summer: Zbigniew Herbert and Miroslav Holub. They are two of my favorite poets.

Zbigniew Herbert is an avant-garde poet from Poland, who experiments with precise, restrained rhythms. His poetry is continually exposed to the impersonal, external pressures of politics and history. He started writing poetry during the Nazi occupation of Poland, and during the years of Stalinism his poems were continually banned. A. Alvarez says “Irony", such as Herbert’s, “is a two-edged weapon, which turns on the poet as readily as on the world outside. It is based on a sense of his own ineffectual fragility when faced with the steam-roller of political force." His politics is of sanity and survival; something that is completely relevant for this new century.

Also a survivor of WWII, Miroslav Holub was conscripted as a railway worker under the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. He went on to become one of his country’s most important scientists, as a research immunologist at The Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine. He argued that, “The emotional, aesthetic and existential value is the same (that scientific method and poetry-making are basically similar)…When looking into the microscope and seeing the expected and when looking at the nascent organism of the poem.” He felt an affinity for the aesthetic of his fellow doctor-poet William Carlos Williams, who is also one of my favorite American poets (along with Wallace Stevens).

So here’s Holub spitting a few bullets at you-

Here too are dreaming landscapes,
Lunar, derelict.
Here too are the masses,
Tillers of the soil.
And cells, fighters
Who lay down their lives
For a song.

Here too are cemeteries,
Fame and snow.
And I hear murmuring,
The revolt of immense estates.

Does anybody have any poets that they would like recommend to me?