Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Sci Fi Messiah

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Hubbard holding court in 1950 -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
What is it that we love so much about a master story teller? If the story is something like a Jackie Collins novel, we know it’s all a fiction but love it nonetheless. A good friend may thickly embellish a story to make it funny or poignant -- we fully appreciate and forgive (nay, encourage) such excesses. In other cases, a religious luminary may tell us a story as an article of faith. If it’s told in a compelling way, we want it to be true; don’t douse us with cold reality. In yet other situations -- a court of law, a science classroom, the truth must come unadorned. The story teller might be perjuring himself if he regales us from a witness stand.

LaFayette Ron Hubbard was a master story teller. Between 1933 and 1938, the prolific author wrote 138 sci-fi and adventure novels (e.g., Buckskin Brigade and Final Blackout). Hubbard who could write (not just type) at 70 words per minute, was just getting warmed up. If his career had been defined only by his writing, his manic achievements would put him in the publishing stratosphere. But Hubbard created a worldwide Dianetics empire and had a net worth of $600,000,000 at the time of his death. Given his excesses, his giddy heights and his (at one point in 1947) suicidal despair, Hubbard was probably an undiagnosed bipolar but that is just this blog author’s speculation.

Egotist, story teller, messiah -- these names attach themselves to Hubbard. But also liar, felon, con artist and letch, depending on the source. Born in 1911, the red-headed Hubbard was nicknamed “Brick”. As a Navy brat, he got to see exotic places such as the Far East. He was a bright, curious boy who achieved Eagle Scout rank in the Boy Scouts. He also had an early interest in psychiatry and spirituality although those didn’t translate into any great college career -- he was drummed out of Georgetown University after only two years with failing grades. Now you might think his career was stymied but you’d be wrong -- he was just winding up. Hubbard’s life covers such broad expanses I’ll just hit some highlights. An in-depth story would take days to tell.

Hubbard was a highly outgoing man with the gift of self-promotion. His biography is filled with proud assertions readily disputed by various witnesses, friends and scholars. There are also some dents and dings along the way, that aren’t part of the official story. Hubbard claims to have been made a lama priest in Beijing; Jon Atack (former Scientologist) says that Hubbard’s own diary from that time fails to make any such mention. In Naval Training School for WWII, Hubbard claimed to be a nuclear physicist though he’d actually flunked those courses at Georgetown. Hubbard touted his 1953 PhD from Sequoia University (in Dianetics), while soft-pedaling the fact that Sequoia was a discredited degree mill. He later claimed to be a Blackfoot Indian blood brother though tribal spokesmen said that their tribe didn’t do such inductions. He was implicated in a 1945 confidence scheme (“Allied Enterprises”) that resulted in a $2900 court settlement (payment by Hubbard to the other litigant). He was relieved of a naval command post after conducting unauthorized gunnery practice off the Mexican shoreline.

With all these scurrilous details one might think Hubbard was a washed up, braggart blowhard. But in fact he was able to recover credibility by attacking the very prominent Achilles Heel of the nascent psychiatry field. In the 1940’s, psychiatrists were routinely doing lobotomies and electroshock. Whatever folly one might see in Scientology audits, they never involved removal of frontal lobes. In 1950, Hubbard authored a pseudoscientific treatise about Dianeteics, “the scientific method of mental therapy”. Dianetics survived several early setbacks. Contemporary authors and science reviewers described Dianetics as “lunatic” and “cult-like”. His earliest public demo of a “Clear” (healthy mental state from Dianetics) fell on it’s face -- his subject failed to remember any relevant facts. But the bombastic Hubbard pressed forward and founded the Church of Scientology in 1953. He soon had followers throughout Europe and the English speaking world. He added the E-meter, a “biofeedback” auditing device in 1959.

Hubbard started to have IRS problems early on -- his acceptance of salary and emoluments from E-meter sales went beyond the accepted norms for non-profit groups. Scientology also had worldwide credibility issues going forward. They were exiled from Rhodesia for possible economic manipulation. They were expelled from Greece as undesirables. Hubbard was actually convicted of fraud in France, though the fine was never enforced. Hubbard decided to avoid national penalties by putting his headquarters outfit (dubbed Sea Org) on a ship at sea. Hubbard was said to engage in very un-Messiah like behavior -- he had Commodore’s Assistants. These were buxom teenage girls who fixed him drinks and laid out his clothes. The thrice-married Hubbard was also said to be given over to fits of pique and anger. He could swear like a sailor which probably befits his naval background (as well as his probable bipolarity).

Apologies for compressing so much into so little a space. Hubbard’s life sprawled big and far like one of his novels -- so much to cover. Hubbard entertained a fantasy, maybe a self-delusion that he was immortal. He had certainly taken much of the world by storm, he was starting to believe his own mythology. He was involved in a near-fatal motor cycle accident in the 1970’s and Hubbard began to rethink his time usage. He realized that he was a flesh-and-blood person living with the same hourglass that all we mere mortals have. He returned to sci-fi writing in 1977 and wrote Battlefield Earth in 1982 (4 years before his death in 1986 at age 74). He stayed in seclusion the last 6 years of his life, hoping to avoid indictment by a New York grand jury; They were investigating his possible “Fair Game” harassment of a Scientology critic.

Hubbard was certain that he would return to Earth as a reincarnated political leader within our own lifetime. When he actually died in 1986, the Church explained that Hubbard had deliberately discarded his physical body and was conducting spiritual research “one galaxy away”.

Whatever you may think about this man’s credibility, you have to be amazed by his prolific writing and imagination as well as his evangelistic zeal. I was impressed that Marshall Applewhite (of Heaven’s Gate fame) could convince his male followers to castrate themselves. Let’s think about it …A car salesman sells a car and a comedian sells a joke. That L. Ron Hubbard, a sci-fi “philosopher king” could sell a whole reality, a future and a lifetime orientation of audits and e-meters is probably several orders of magnitude more impressive than any salesman, anywhere. In an odd way of looking at it, Hubbard is still alive and well -- his vibrant organization (replete with celebrity “thought leaders”) is thriving today.

© 2010 blogSpotter

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Tuesday, December 21, 2010

News in a Barbie World

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Miles and miles of Miley footage -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
I’m still huffing & puffing to catch up with my blog – work is getting busy (uncomfortably so) just two days before Christmas. Today’s blog is inspired by tabloid overload from this morning’s Today Show – and I can probably present it without too much prep time.

What do Natalee Holloway, Chandra Levy and Amanda Knox have in common? Unless you've been living under sensory deprivation, you’ll know that the first two are beautiful women who disappeared under tragic, mysterious circumstances in Aruba and D.C. respectively. Amanda is a beautiful woman who is implicated in the tragic murder of her beautiful roommate in Italy. What all three of these women have in common is thousands of hours of news coverage. Not just tabloids, but “legitimate” news venues (Time, NBC News) have devoted mountains of pages and film footage to these events.

Not to diminish the sad and sorrowful nature of these happenings, their primacy is weird in a nation that is otherwise challenged with two wars, a great recession, cancer, pollution and probably a thousand topics that are more central to our well-being. That the stories are tragic gives them the aura of “newsworthiness” that can’t be garnered from the titillating exploits of Miley Cyrus, Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian. The news peddlers' fascination with beautiful women is out of proportion; they know that more ordinary women are gripped with envy and "what-if's?". Men are mostly lured by sex, albeit a glossy, unreal and unseemly aspect of sex. The observations go from the vapid (Paris Hilton sans underwear) to the lurid ("bones of missing woman found in park..."). The common thread here is that the dramatis personae are beautiful, young, generally affluent females. In fact, I’ve worked up a profile – you can compute how tabloid worthy you are...

AM I TABLOID WORTHY?

• Beautiful ...30 points
• Female ...30 points
• Young (under 30) ... 20 points
• White ... 10 points
• Affluent ...10 points

There’s no definite way of scoring this, but I’ll say you need an 80/100 to be on the front page of American Statesman. You need 90/100 for Nancy Grace to feature you obsessively.

Wanda Sykes has a whole comedy routine about the public concern over missing black prostitutes – there is no apparent concern. After a point, a john in the neighborhood might say, “Where’s all our ho’s?” A black woman can be abducted at a car wash, in front of witnesses, directly across the street from the Dallas Morning News. It will barely be a footnote under Metro events, page 7D. The above profile attributes taken together say a lot about our social values. It also has to be a fair damsel in distress, otherwise there is a marked loss of interest; a chinless woman with glasses will fall through the media cracks. Along gender lines, one supposes that men must know better or fend for themselves. There have been occasions where men have been abducted or tortured – it’ll have a better placement than 7D in the paper but not much. It certainly won’t give Greta Van Susteren material for a year’s worth of forensic expert interviews.

The victim doesn’t have to be affluent, but it helps. If the subject isn’t solidly middle class or higher, it may be seen as the necessary consequence of a squalid upbringing. The consequences are sad but not surprising. Advancing age is like masculinity – it confers a certain responsibility on the victim. “She should’ve known better .... she should’ve seen it coming”. If a 45 year old woman was abducted in Aruba people would spin it very differently ... “That old broad, she got in over her head”.

When King Kong scaled the Empire State Building, he didn’t hold a balding 35 year old man, a fat woman or a cleaning lady. He held Fay Wray, a terrified beauty with torn clothes. No detail of Fay Wray could be different – there would be no movie otherwise. Maybe society’s alter ego will someday expand beyond an idealized Blonde Venus and we’ll care about that bald-headed man. But not so much now.

© 2010 blogSpotter

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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Printers with Attitude

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A new world of print opens up -- Picture courtesy of HP

by blogSpotter
In the hustle-bustle of Christmas, I’ve had trouble getting back to my blog. We’ve been given a major year-end project at my job (delivery date Dec 27th) so I’ve had some trouble finding time. I do have a short blurb I can add here for a technology topic. A piece on L. Ron Hubbard is in the works, but I can’t bang that one out very quickly. Stand by for L. Ron (an interesting man by the way).

Last weekend I bought myself an early Christmas present – an HP Photosmart D110a printer. I purchased it at Sam’s at a reasonable price ($59) – a small discount over what I might pay at Wal-Mart. To look quickly and superficially at this inkjet printer, you might be unimpressed – it’s an all-in-one scanner-copier-printer (now the norm) about the size of a small toaster oven. Suppress your urge to yawn – there is more. It's actually sleek, black and pretty. Another thing you might notice on second glance is the little 2 inch screen on the front. This printer has Wi-Fi and a small processor that lets it function more or less as a computer. It connects to the Internet through your home Wi-Fi and provides numerous print-related apps, as well as a slick graphical interface for print, copy and scan functions.

I might only use about 3 of the built-in apps – coupon printer, crosswords and special forms (e.g., graph paper and ruled paper). Other special apps (Disney print shop, msnbc headlines) seem geared to print a lot of output, that I personally don’t want or need. I clicked on msnbc headlines and with no prompting I got a color-rich two-page print of today’s headlines. I can tell where this would be lucrative to HP. The print quality is very nice by the way. The D110a also has a feature called ePrint where you can print documents to your printer (with HP-assigned email address) by sending the document as an email attachment. Can’t say I’d really use that – my printer is off when I’m away; also I want to be there to inspect results (or fix paper jams) when printing anything at all.

Now there are some great aspects to the D110a. Apple just released iOS4.2 for its iPad, iPod and iPhone family of devices – one of the main iOS4.2 offerings is AirPrint. These devices print effortlessly and beautifully to my printer and no device driver has to be installed. HP is the only company with compatible printers – makes me wonder if Apple and HP are in cahoots, not that I mind terribly. For Mac and Windows computers, you have to install the D110a driver – no problem for me (being a geek and all). I had every Wi-Fi capable device in my house sending prints to my new printer very shortly. Have never before had a printer this centrally available and powerful.

Back in the 90’s, Bluetooth was hyped as the Next Great Thing. These many years later, we do have some Bluetooth penetration primarily in the form of headsets, mice and keyboards. BUT (you knew it was coming) … Bluetooth never lived up to the hype. It’s power hungry and has limited range – no match for the Wi-Fi that makes my devices dance with each other (wirelessly) from opposite ends of the house. I always liked the idea of a networked home printer, but none of the previous solutions had much appeal. There was something expensive or kludgy in every suggested scenario. Now for a mere $59 (+ tax) HP has given us the omnipresent printer. It’s a gabby printer that interacts and works with every damn device in my house. Talk about cross-platform!

I was in a computer class a few weeks ago (Spring Frameworks if you must know). A young lad of 30 wondered why anyone needs a printer. I’m one of a steadfast multitude who likes printed copies of everything. I have all my Quicken reports and copies of my tax returns. I’ve printed many a PDF manual because a dog-eared notebook format is frequently preferable to the arduous routine of booting a computer and Googling a reference. It’s also not a bad idea to keep hard copies of sales receipts and order forms. Let me say – I’ve bought many books and songs in the virtual marketplace and feel a little short-changed that I can’t hold them or see them on a shelf. Anything, be it an important document or favorite movie has more permanence if it’s physical -- more than bits and bytes on a hard drive that might crash at some point. I want a favorite movie on DVD and a tax document printed on quality paper.

Back to the D110a Photosmart printer… Should you get one? If you want a really cool, cross-platform, multitasking print genie the answer is probably “Yes”. Let me say I got the less expensive model – The HP Envy is the top-of-the line product. It’s whisper quiet and looks like an expensive blu-ray player. It's pricey but very slick looking. Whatever model you get, welcome to the new world of printing with W-Fi wizardry.

© 2010 blogSpotter

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Thursday, December 09, 2010

One-Two Punch

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Obama and Cantor in unholy alliance -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
Today’s blog entry might meander a little but there’s actually a couple of underlying themes. One of them is our President who seems to be losing altitude by the minute. I’ve been referring to him as President Feather Duster for a time now. The Faustian bargain he just made with House Republicans concerning tax breaks for the wealthy is maddening … no wonder that the Liberal Dems are looking to body block it. We could use some tax breaks for the little guy – the rich man doesn’t need it.

Now along similar lines, there is talk of reducing the deficit by eliminating the mortgage interest deduction – across the board, for everyone. So what we have friends, is a one-two punch to the middle class. Obama’s devil deal will assure that wealthy people aren’t on line to help out with the deficit via tax. Mortgage interest elimination will assure that the middle (and lower middle) class will be roped in, hogtied and branded for “deficit reduction”. Why is it that politics reminds me of a rowdy game of crack-the-whip? People think they know what they want and vote accordingly. But the result is horrible and bears no resemblance to whatever was offered. It would be like mixing the ingredients for fudge and coming out with lemon tarts.

Now let’s move the discussion along to earmarks and pork barrel spending. Several strident Tea Party candidates lambasted earmarks during the mid-terms and prominent “next generation” Republicans came along for the ride. Representative Eric Cantor made earmarks his campaign centerpiece as did Speaker John Boehner. Now both have suggested Hal Rogers, Kentucky’s notorious Pork Barrel King as the head of the Appropriations committee. Rogers would even like to bring along a Lockheed lobbyist as the committee coordinator. If these guys really care about reducing the deficit, would they be heading their committee with the King of Pork?

And speaking of the Tea Party above, they’ve been cited by Citizens Against Government Waste. It appears that Tea Party candidates have now received over 1 billion dollars in earmarks. Republicans everywhere, did you get what you voted for? It looks like several initiatives are adding to our tax bill and taking away tax revenue. The only people being billed are middle class home owners so far. This has all developed during our lame duck session at yearend 2010. We haven’t even let the dogs out yet.

It turns out (surprise, surprise) that people want what they want, never mind the cheap rhetoric. Politicians of both parties want to fund home district projects and would prefer that someone else pay for it. To be rigorously consistent with any idealistic goal is political suicide – the case of being dead right. What I have to offer is that there are comparatively fair and less painful ways of doing deficit reduction but it involves help from all corners – no one group gets stuck with the tab. Obama shouldn’t cave to Republicans bearing “gifts”. There won’t be a double dip recession here – just a double dose of regrets about who we elected, and who gets saddled with reining in the budget.

© 2010 blogSpotter

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