Chris Brauer Media Project [BLOG]

Watching on TV the jets hadn't even finished flying over in the intro to Game 1 when I felt my heart stop for the first time. The Red Sox are in the World Series! Fifteen years ago I sat in the bleachers of the Red Sox spring training facility in Winter Haven, Florida with Johnny Pesky (of the infamous Pesky pole) admiring 24-year-old Ellis Burks' swing (now Ellis Burks is "creaking" around the bases, how time flies) as he joked about the fact that he was born in 1919, the year after the Red Sox last one the World Series and that he wanted to see them win in his lifetime. Waiting for the Red Sox to win the World Series is measured in lifetimes. That's why I am going to Boston to be part of the magic. I visited Air Canada and eBay and will be sitting in the Fenway Park bleachers for Game 6 watching Curt Schilling throw bullets while lucky Johnny will be sitting in the box seats behind home plate instead of in the dugout. We haven't seen the last of the curse but I read an interview with Pesky where he says he's going to run around the infield naked if the Red Sox win the World Series. He still looks pretty fit for an 85-year-old fungo-bat hitting talisman. I think I'd like to see that.

Labels: sport

According to The Economist: "Germany's economic growth has lagged far behind that of the rest of the rich world during the past few years". The recommended solution is cutting taxes, allowing more skilled immigration, and making the education system more efficient.

But the causes of Germany's economic distress are possibly rooted in deeper cultural misgivings about the "economization" of all aspects of civic life. Even political advisor Wolfgang Schäuble, architect of a German Conservative Credo promotes a notion that "the market is merely a tool, not an answer to every human problem".

One day in 1991 I sat on the stoop of an elite Frieburg University frat house with the magnificent Naomi Creutzfeldt and a couple of friends who were members of the university fencing club and had the chivalrous battle scars to prove it. The subject was the economy and there was a cockiness to the German perspective, at the end of a flourishing run where the Mark (R.I.P.) had soared. Even I remembered getting 2.5 to one against the Canadian dollar and was astonished to see the currencies near equal.

But then something strange happened to a nation that I have learned to love, having been to the country over a dozen times in the last 20 years. My father was born in Bremerhaven on the North Sea in 1940 (significant date?), and I have deep nostalgic connection through my grandmother and relatives, many still in the country.

But after 1992 Germany made a stutter step, and then another, and shortly stopped moving all together. It was around that time that I worked on the floor of a coffee factory for Jacobs-Suchard, makers of fine coffee and chocolate (beauty Toblerone). One day in my first week I opened one of the coffee vats one turn too far and couldn't get it closed. Three tons of coffee spilled out on the floor and all around me. "Helfen! Helfen!" I hollered but my co-workers simply gathered in a circle around my misfortune, my boss smiling and slapping me on the shoulder. They helped me shovel it into the trash and later in the shower I brewed some of the gourmet lost in the unfortunate accident. It reminded me again of the teamwork and pride that have made the German brand respected for reliability and quality. But it is precisely these workers, unionized, apparently overpaid and over benefited according to economic theories, that are at the center of the economic dispute. Those workers were proud of their jobs, made a good living, were loyal to their company, and contributed back into the economy. But those jobs are getting squeezed and it looks like Germany faces no alternative but to assimilate.

Their malaise extends beyond the economy into their national sport of football (soccer) where they seem unable to exhibit anything close to support. While the stands are filled for many a Bundesliga game anyone who has spoken to a German national team supporter will tell you that they are the most self-depreciating lot in all of the world's most popular game. When I went to World Cup 2002 in Japan I had to stand alone in supporting the team even though they went all the way to the final before falling to a Brazilian team that was the best in the world by some distance. No shame in that surely? Wrong. German fans will tell you that their team was boring and played uninspiring football. You can bet that if the English made it to their first World Cup final since 1966 the fans wouldn't care if they did it by scoring in the first minute and kicking the ball into the stands for the rest of the game.

So why can't Germans get back on their feet after the boastful 80s? Nationalism and pride are dirty words in Germany, associated with their collective guilt at past endeavours. Maybe hosting the 2006 World Cup will invite the world to see a happier and more stable Germany, aware of the unique contributions they can offer to the world, and not afraid to admit it.

Labels: politics, sociology

It's tough enough being a fan of the cursed Boston Red Sox without our own players serving up big fat Don Zimmer bull charges for Yankee fans to drive out of the park. The psyche of Red Sox fans is infamously fragile and when Pedro Martinez gave up an eighth inning lead to the Yankees on September 25 in a game that basically sealed the division for the black hats, it bore an eerie resemblance to last year's unmentionable postseason playoff debacle game 7 of the AL Championship Series. But we certainly didn't need this cherry on top:

"What can I say -- I just tip my hat and call the Yankees my daddy," Martinez said to the Associated Press reporter after the game. "I can't find a way to beat them at this point ... they're that good. They're that hot right now -- at least against me. I wish they would disappear and not come back."

Or how about Manny Ramirez hinting last year just before the big Red Sox/Yankees playoff showdown that he always wanted to play for the Yankees. Red Sox fans would disown their own children for making such a grotesque admission.

So here we go again right? Yankees stormed to a victory in Game 1 and chants cascaded from the bleachers ... "Who's your Daddy?" ... boom boom bo-bo-boom ... "Who's your Daddy?". A dark shadow moved across the land.

But why take the long view of history, why even mention the curse. Why imagine that these players are beaten before they start. It's the luxury of perspective, that there can be many of them.

Let's try this angle. The Red Sox under Terry Francona are obviously a happy bunch, joking with each other on the bench, and taking advantage of new freedoms to each carve their own style. Hair choices are at the forefront as long, shaggy, and sometimes afroesque styles grace the starting lineup.

So maybe some of the karma of the 1972 World Champion Oakland As who led by Reggie Jackson and Rollie Fingers defined themselves through shaggy locks, handlebar mustaches, and great team baseball. While the 2004 Yankees are not lacking in team spirit, this year's edition of the Red Sox look more than ever that they are in it together. So we look at Pedro's daddy quote as a noble attempt to deflect criticism from his manager and teammates and take veteran responsibility, albeit in his unique way.

Well when he walks out on to the mound tonight Pedro is going to have to bottle some of that afroesque defiance because the chants are going to be loud and the only way to quiet them will be good movement on his breaking ball and velocity on the fastball. It's time for the son to define himself out of his father's image. I'll spare you further cheesy cliches. Come on Pedro. For the love of the Red Sox.

Labels: sport

Some thoughts on the second presidential debate at Washington University in St Louis. Not very well evolved thoughts. Like a sprinkle of thoughts.

It seems you have to be a $$billionaire$$ to run for president. Possibly just a millionaire but preferably a billionaire. It was such a touching moment during the 2nd Presidential debate when billionaire Kerry found common ground with billionaire Bush and surprising contender "Charlie" (ABC moderator Charles Gibson) as the three people in the room who might suffer financially from rolling back a Bush tax cut for the rich.

You can't help but think that there is a bit of common ground lost with the voting public when all the candidates are billionaires. And it is not just in the USA. New Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin is either a millionaire or possibly even a billionaire. The reason is that it is hard for a non-billionaire primarily concerned with the rolling fortunes of a risk-infused bank balance to adopt the mindset of a billionaire.

So what you have with these debates is a schooled at Yale billionaire's boys club performing in front of a nervous general public audience struggling to read Q-cards, often mispronouncing their own questions. You feel Bush's backroom boys told him to be assertive. Sometimes it seemed Bush walked that fine line between assertive and scary, out-of-breath, crazy-eyed fiend. You had to wonder if Bush didn't dip into a stash of some nasty hydroponic Canadian BC Bud when he was practicing but opted not to on national tv and paid the price. It seemed even more possible when he disclosed:

"When a drug comes in from Canada I want to make sure it cures ya and it doesn't kill ya. My worry is that it looks like it comes from Canada but it comes from a different part of the world."

So the obvious answer my friends is to sample. Just a thought. And from that assertive occasionally raged into crazy-eyes. Kerry took a different approach, playing with the farce, like a billionaire plays with solid gold juggling balls. He got a question from an audience member asking him to look straight into the camera and declare he won't raise taxes. So Kerry looked straight into the camera which had to be looking straight at him because of the nature of the question. Hence he grabbed some straight in the camera time with America. Tricky. Tricky. But not so tricky that your average viewer doesn't see straight through it. It's easy to dislike Bush's machismo but poor Kerry remains difficult to like.

I think one of the problems with attacking tax cuts for billionaires is that this is the stable of the American dream. By going after the top 1% of financial earners Kerry is going after the Valhalla, Eldorado, and Graceland of citizen aspirations. It's like introducing a new lottery by describing how the winners will be persecuted and asking for the support of all the participants. Nobody wants to go after a winner because secretly we all be believe we will be winners one day. It is one of the often unspoken pillars of capitalism. By nature of 1% there's limited room at the top but we secretly think we can all fit in there, like high school kids into a Volkswagen. Take that pillar away and the game gets a lot less attractive for a lot of players.

Everyone has an opinion on Iraq ranging from crooked and illegal occupation to the libertarian deliverance of freedom. It really is the trickiest topic to address. But couple it with the pathetic responses Kerry and Bush gave to Jim Lehrer on the topic of Sudan during the first debate (both agreed studiously that it was genocide, shaking their helpless heads) and you can frame these topics. Political leaders massaging the levers of power should recognize that rhetoric of any kind is only as believable as the maxim of their actions. As in Emmanuel Kant's epic categorical imperative: "Always act so that you can will the maxim of your action to become universal law". What a beauty! Implicit to this moral law is that there are two universes: the phenomenal world of experience, and the noumenal world of reason. We live in these worlds and experience good and evil. An act that you would by willing that anyone or everyone should perform is a good act. His law demands that everyone act at all times as though he/she were the ruling monarch of the universe and the principle of his/her action would automatically become the principal of the action of everyone. IIt sound like a free pass to become leader of the free world.

And as such we can look to the opinions on Iraq and Sudan expressed by Bush and Kerry during the first two debates in this philosophical light. Kerry scores first by attacking Bush in a bully light. The underlying text decrying the possibility that at some future date, in India/Pakistan, North/South Korea, China/Taiwan more bullies will emerge, pointing to precedent. You went unilaterally into Iraq to protect your interests and we are now doing the same. We are also too strong to be stopped. Bullies on the rampage all licking their lips at the savaging of the UN that occurred under Bush's watch.

But when we look further to the issue of Sudan, Kerry's false start on Iraq crumbles, and the maxim of his action descends to dwell with dour and hostile Bush. Neither man distinguishes himself in dodging questions on the topic, speaking of non-existent African forces, and shaking their heads with such a serious shake.

Kant's law demands that we set the standard for others through our actions. So the standard is that we can walk in anywhere we like and bully whoever we like over whatever we like. And the standard is also that we will not come to the aid of those in desperate need of our available support unless there is an obvious advantage to our interests. Oh please. Why do you have to set the bar so high? Whatever will future generations do to improve these lofty standards?

For a better example you can return to the Crusades of the 12th century described brilliantly by James Reston Jr in Warriors of God:

"The King was a very giant in the field, and was everywhere in the field -- now here, now there, wherever the attacks of the Turks raged the hottest," reported a chronicler until unbelievably he was unhorsed!

"Sire, see him there! On foot!" one of the Arabian Sultan Saladin's sergeants shouted to his lord excitedly. Saladin had seen it all.
And turning to his brother el Melek el-Adel, he said "Go. Take my two swiftest Arabian horses and lead them to him. Tell him that I send them to him, and that a man so great as he is should not be in parts such as these, on foot, with his men."

"It was the crowning act of chivalry in the entire Third Crusade. The present was 'for the brave deeds he had done and all the prowess he had won,' el-Adel said when he reached Richard in the melee. He requested only that the King remember the gift later should he be so lucky as to return from the battle alive."

So not only was Saladin victorious in vanquishing the crusaders from Holy lands but he also established precedent in a maxim of action. The bar needs to be set high by nature of leadership. Saladin and Richard the Lionheart understood that but do the current presidential candidates? What if a candidate suddenly announced that they were heading to Sudan to restore the people and land to safety in the interest of a common humanity. Their suffering is our suffering, your suffering is mine. Would it blow the lid off the rhetoric or would the polling numbers crumble. I have no idea. But I'd like to find out.

Labels: literature, politics

Ahhhhhhh. Nothing better than a Canadian baseball fan desperate to watch the action from his favorite team, a private passion of sorts, the beloved but cursed Red Sox. So much for the litany of crappy Sports TV you can access in Canada. All four CTV Sportsnets showing the bloody Yankees (61 comeback wins this year by the way, defined as losing after the sixth inning and winning in the end. Do you know how much 61 lashes hurt?) with a ticker across the bottom explaining that fans can watch the Red Sox v Angels on ESPN2. How about Sportsnet2 instead of repetitive broadcasts seemingly distinct only for hockey and baseball (Sportsnet Ontario fans get more Red Sox games). Anyway TSN seems like it never has anything except golf tournaments where Tiger Woods doesn't win. Crap. Crap. Crap.

It's the second time that my digital box has let me down waiting for the start of a Red Sox postseason game. That's 2/2. A good result if you are Manny Ramirez but not the best for beleagured Red Sox fans weary from the effects of the curse but infinitely optimistic in the deepest of hearts. Come on Red Sox fans look into your hearts. They will win thie year. Say it often enough and you'll belive it too. In the meantime I have resorted to camping out in front of my laptop watching MLB.COM broadcast of the Red Sox v Angels over IP. I guess the tide is turning.

You can't believe the torment of a Red Sox fan having to watch a Yankees comeback deep into the night (12th inning and beyond). Luckily I've got IP. But if I didn't these TV producers need a head shake. Hold on. Just watch the Yankees. We'll bring you the Red Sox somewhere 2 hours in. Great. Thank you for the customer service. I bet your manifesto calls for "Customer-Centric" service. We'll you've got it Sportsnet. Center of shit is still shit, except it is all around.

OK. Yankees came back and won 7-6 and Canadian television has connected with the Red Sox game in the top of the fourth inning. And for all you semi-fans who say there is no curse, I will just laugh louder and we won't be able to hear your naysaying because I'll be laughing so loud. :-)

Labels: media, sport

I've been reading about a great clash of two powerful historical figures, the reverberation of which echoes today. The victorious, cultured and calculating Sultan Saladin, hero of Arabia, Egypt and Syria and the magnificent - and bisexual (not that there's anything wrong with that a la Seinfeld) - Richard I, King of England, known as the Lionheart of modern Robin Hood fame. The years are 1187AD-1192AD and Lionheart is in a lover's spat with King Philip Augustus of France. But that's not what is on his mind.

But it is one of the juicy tidbits that can be found in the riveting text of James Reston Jr entitled Warriors of God. It's the story of the Third Crusade (Crusades totaled about 7 in all and occurred from 1100AD-1350AD) but somehow it seems nobody is studying the lessons learned. It turns out that the world has been battling over the heart of the Middle East for a rather long time. The battles of the Third Crusade occur across modern Libya, Syria, Palestine, Israel, Jordan and Cyprus. All of the Crusades are focused on a clash between the Christian and Islamic worlds, territories changing hands in recurring drama. There were five major crusades but only the first can be seen as successful for the Christians. If by successful I mean they took Jerusalem, the constant target, and the battles as usual over the Wailing Wall, the Dome of the Rock, etc.

The question is whether we are part of a very long history (thousands of years of recurring conflict in the region) or a single event (bring democracy to Iraq). Interpretations of the neo-conservative agenda in Washington range from pragmatic prevention to Holy War. Probably the greatest universal fear of all stakeholders in the drama unfolding in Iraq - save the fanatics on all sides - is that the relatively isolated conflict will explode into a global religious war, suddenly unified from Chechnya to Yemen, Iraq to Afghanistan, Iran to Pakistan.

The Crusades accepted no quarter, one spiritual philosophy would survive and the other would be vanquished. In the case of Saladin and King Richard, the Islamic hero was amazed to see women in full battle gear taken before him as prisoners of war, dressed in the enemy armor. He questioned them and then summarily cut off their heads (reminiscent of anything?). Not just the women of course. And not just Saladin. After an exhausting siege of the city of Acre Richard tired of Saladin's negotiations for surrender and executed the thousands within. The streets run with blood in these stories. Blood and bravery really as fighters on both sides declare Jihad and run each other through. All very grotesque and modern. The current scenes from the school in Chechnya, headcutters in Iraq, burning buildings in Sadr City, and suicide bombs in Jerusalem sound more like a reverberation of an old echo than a neo-tune.

My favorite story of the crusades strikes a different chord. I heard it as a political science student at Herstmonceux Castle in Surrey, England. A guy who looked like James Dean told it around a pub fire and there was rapture. A prince is born in a battling kingdom. His father is a fighter but he is a poet. He takes jousting lessons but also takes walks in the forest to observe nature. One day he is walking in the forest when he comes upon an apparition holding a cup more beautiful then anything he has ever seen. The Prince reaches out to grab the cup and when he does he looks straight into it and burns his hands and eyes from the heat and light. As he looks back through a bleary gaze the cup has disappeared. He returns to his kingdom eager to tell his father what he has seen only to find that the King has died in his absence and his coronation is scheduled for the next day. The King is dead. Long live the King. So the Prince who is now King comes to his throne obsessed with the cup he has seen. Contrary to his poetic nature he sends his best and brightest knights all over the world, Crusading to find the elusive Holy Grail. They burn and they plunder in their pursuits but the cup is nowhere to be found. The Prince who would be King grows older and the burns on his hands and the blindness in his eyes worsens with each passing day. One day he sits on his thrown, frustrated and bored with his darkening world: "Fool," he shouts. "Get me a glass of water!" jester in the court retrieves water and brings it to the Prince who would be King. As he brings the cup to his lips the King finds his burns on his hands healing and his sight returning. He looks at the cup in his hands and realizes he is drinking from the same cup he saw in the forest. Less shiny, scrubby really, but the cup nonetheless: "Fool! Fool! How can you have found what my best and brightest knights have searched every corner of the world in pursuit?"
"Sire," the fool explains warily. "All I knew was that you were thirsty."

I love that story. Let's quench our thirst for water before blood. People are dying every day in pursuit of shiny cups that turn dull on receipt. And not for the first time.

Labels: literature

Who knew it was actually a condition? Like so many of the modern conditions it is always a bit surprising to hear that individual actual experiences can be categorized. I fundamentally disagree with polling on the premise that it is impossible to predict what millions will do from the reactions of thousands. We are all our own creature. On Liberty was one of my favorite texts as a teenager. So back to the condition. Watching the Presidential debates and recent discourse in Europe, Canada and the Middle East, it is impossible not feel cheated, fed a poor quality beef, a great threat in the era of BSE. Turns out that all these politicians are suffering from a condition called "Cognitive Dissonance". At least that's my read from the condition sometimes used to describe s personal state of confusion: "I'm suffering from cognitive dissonance" in the nerdiest of the nerdy worlds.

Here's what it means. From University of Twente in the Netherlands comes a definition of the two key components:

1) dissonance is psychologically uncomfortable enough to motivate people to achieve consonance, and
2) in a state of dissonance, people will avoid information and situations that might increase the dissonance.

So the example is Robert Mugabe claiming the Zimbabwe bottom line looks good, Bush struggling to describe Iraq, Margaret Thatcher on the poll tax, Clinton on Lewinsky, Kim Jong-Il on nuclear weapons, Thabo Mbeki on AIDS, Colin Powell on keeping his pride, Putin in Chechnya, and Gerhard Schroeder on the economy. Treat them with care. They are suffering to a condition similar to the guy at a party who tells terrible jokes and everyone laughs uncomfortably and then tells another stinky joke. It's called cognitive dissonance. I think we must all suffer from it to certain degrees. Some more high profile than others.!

Labels: politics

My interest in the recent work of Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto (property assets) and participation in the grid computing SETI project (processing power) at NASA brought together a common theme: turning latent resources into formal or performing resources creates value. This led me to wonder why the same concept could not be applied to realize a greater proportion of our collective potential in the form of individual contributions to collective networked intelligence. This path led me to Pierre Levy, Chair of Collective Intelligence at the University of Ottawa, but I will post more formally on that later in this blog. For now the only part of this concept that I can firmly grasp is that we need to promote our individual abilities to contribute to the collective. All of us can relate to a feeling of unfufiled potential, frustrated ambition, and of dreams, realized and otherwise.

As a young naturalist traveling the world Charles Darwin wrote in his journal: If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin (Darwin, 1909). This thought resonates today as the networked economy becomes a modern pervasive global institution and vigorous efforts should be directed to examining how efforts can contribute to developing this still public, but increasingly privatized institution. Darwin would approve of addressing critical issues so early in an evolution. His observation could be made of the networked economy: if it provides opportunities for individuals, families and communities to improve their lives but we ignore opportunities to promote application in this regard, great is our sin.

What if the World Wide Web was all about that?

Labels: collective_intelligence, internet