================================================================== Stuck In Traffic "Current Events, Cultural Phenomena, True Stories" Issue #34 - October, 2000 Contents: Current Events: Clinton "Delays" Missile Decision President dodges the bullet on missle defense. Current Events: Senate Debates China Trade Bill A look at how the North Carolina Senators approach the decision to open up trade with China Music Review: "Everything Is Possible" by Os Mutantes *** Book Review: _The Cluetrain Manifesto_ by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger *** Cultural Phenomena: "Napster Rap" A realistic look at the copyright issues surrounding the recording industry lawsuit of Napster Movie Review: "Hollow Man" aka "Gray's Anatomy Goes On A Rampage" ** Book Review _The Florence King Reader_ by Florence King *** Book Review _All Tomorrow's Parties_ by William Gibson *** Movie Review "Drowning Mona" ** 1/2 True Stories WorldCon 2000 Trip Report =================================== Current Events Clinton "delays" missle decision The BBC and other news services are reporting that President Clinton has decided to "delay" making a decision on the missle defense system. The relevant soundbites from Clinton are: "I simply cannot conclude with the information we have today that we have enough confidence..." and "We should use this time to ensure that NMD, if deployed, would actually enhance our overall national security," Figures. President Clinton has never been one to take a stand on an issue unless the public sentiment is absolutely clear. But on this one, the public is divided, so he's not about to make a stand on the merits of a missle defense system. Besides, this is an election year. No way is he going to stir up trouble and turn national defense into an election issue. President Clinton is more or less _making_ a lame duck of himself. =================================== Current Events Senate Debates China Trade Bill The U.S. Senate is debating landmark trade legislation that would open up trade with China, allowing U.S. businesses greater access to China. Businesses strongly back the effort, citing the huge potential markets there. It's interesting to observe how North Carolina's Senators are taking positions on the issue. Senator Jesse Helms strongly opposes opening up trade with China, claiming that we should not do business with a country the not only opposes religious freedom and human rights, but actively persecutes them. Helms is offering several amendments to the legislation: Delay granting of permanent normal trade relations until China has met a series of human-rights conditions. Establish a voluntary code of conduct for U.S. businesses in China, urging them to look out for human-rights abuses. Require China to stop jamming Voice of America and Radio Free Asia broadcasts. Voice the Senate's opposition to the Chinese government's practice of forced abortion and sterilization policies. Require reports on the effect of the trade bill on agriculture. Require the president to suspend normal trade relations after five years if China does not live up to its trade commitments. Supporting religious freedom, freedom of the press, and ending forced sterilations and abortions are all worthy goals. But you have to ask yourself if blocking trade with a nation has ever improved its human rights record. Has an economic blockade of Iraq improved the human rights situation in that country? Has it loosened Saddam Hussein's dictatorial grip on his people? Has Libya been liberated from Ghadafi after all these years of econimic embargo? Has North Korea evolved from a Communist dictatorship to a budding democracy? Has 30 years of economic isolation reformed Castro and his communist dictatorship of Cuba? The answer in every case is nope. Not a bit. In every case, economic isolation has actually made the situation worse. In every case, it actually strengthens the dictator's grip on his country. Still, it's difficult to accept the notion of doing business in a country where people are being arrested simply for peacefully practicing their religion. We can't just ignore the problems and go about our trading with a blind eye. It's important to keep several things in mind. First of all, doing business in a country does _not_ morally legitimize the government of that country. Second, doing business in a country does not stop us from voicing our opposition to human rights abuses and it does not stop us from publicizing the human rights violations in that country. Furthermore, having businesses at work in the country gives us good access for monitoring and observing these abuses so they can be publicized. The biggest reason, though, to support opening up trade in countries that have poor human rights records is that liberalizing trade practices in a country does far more to help the people of that country than it helps the government maintain power. Trade is liberating. People how are economically destitute have no time or energy for working to reform their government and oppose evil. They're too busy trying to make through the end of the day without starving. But if we infiltrate a country with trade, start working on building a solid, thriving middle class, then there's more hope for creating solid, political reform movements in the country. It's not a guarantee of reform of course, but it at least raises the possibility. So I applaud Helms publicizing the Human Rights record of China and it's something we must never forget. We must continuously work on selling the idea of Human Rights reform to the Chinese just as ardently and vigorously as we sell them blue jeans and Big Macs. But economic embargo is not the right way to do it. To date, North Carolina's other senator, John Edwards has not had the courage to take a stand on the issue. Says he won't do so until just before the vote. I guess taking principled stand on human rights and trade is not something we can expect from Mr. Edwards. =================================== Music Review "Everything Is Possible" Os MUtantes *** Os Mutantes ("The Mutants") were a Brazilian pop band in the late 60's whom some people credit for introducing modern pop instrumentation (i.e., electric guitars and drums) into Brazilian pop music. That might be overstating the case some, but it's true they managed to take some of the trends going on in music at the time, i.e., The Beatles, The Animals, experimental jazz ala John Cage, and give it a distinct local flavor. But it would be a mistake to say this band is a British Invasion copycat band. They bring enough originality and attitude to the table that their pop culture influences are just that, only influences. Long since broken up, Os Mutantes now have a CD out of some of their best efforts called "Everything is Possible" on David Byrne's Luaka Bop records. Listening to this CD you get a sense for just how experimental their time period was. Each song is very different in form and tone, from the long dreamy visions in "Day 36" to hard driving rock sound of "My Girl." Lots of psychedelic sounds on this one. You can't help but conjure up visions of GoGo dancers when listening to this CD. Well, GoGo dancers doing the Bossa Nova that is. =================================== Book Review _The Cluetrain Manifesto_ by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger *** Widely touted as the book that outlines the future of business on the Internet, I found my self both ardently agreeing and disagreeing with it at the same time. Ever since the net hit the mainstream consciousness a few years back, people have been trying to mold it into different sorts of media with only modest degrees of success. At first, the net was going to be this gigantic library in the sky. Well, that sorta worked but people quickly realized the the information on the net is much more ephemeral than the information in a library. And all the really dense information was hiding behind some sort of payment request. Then the net was going to be the next kind of Television. Web TV baby. Interactive TV. Active TV that lets you control the action. Seems kinda silly now, but that was the hype for a while. Next on the hit parade, was the net as a cool and groovy magazine. This was more successful, but it turned out that people don't like to read for long stretches while sitting in front of the computer. They don't like to read deeply on the net as much as they like to read broadly. So none of these analogies worked entirely successfully, but they weren't entirely unsuccessful either. The good folks at The Cluetrain Manifesto managed to name one of the key features of the net that previous analogies failed to account for. The problem with other past analogies is they had a built in assumption of a few people in control of the content broadcasting to the many. But the thing that attracts most people to the net is that it's an opportunity for people to communicate one on one with each other. It's an opportunity to create widely dispersed communities rallied around common interests where people can talk, share, and enjoy each other's company. And that's the part of The Cluetrain Manifesto that rings so very true to me. They argue that people are craving to hear natural human "voices" on the net. They want to talk to other people. Real honest to god people. They don't want to talk to superstars or "personalities." They want to talk to real folks. The part I disagree with is the second part of their thesis, which is that since people want to hear natural human voices on the net, there's no place for Big Business on the net. They claim that people will reject the nameless, faceless, "marketing messages" from corporations and demand to interact with companies on a human to human level. While there's certainly a place for human-to-human communications in business environments, I think the authors vastly underestimate the necessity of "brand." Anytime you're trying to conduct business long distance, when you don't personally know the person you're dealing with and when you are unable to personally confront the person you're dealing with if something goes wrong. You have to deal base on trust and reputation. A brand identity is a way to establish that trust. I may not personally know my Honda Salesman, even if I shake hands with him. But I know the reputation of the Honda brand and am therefore willing to plunk down a large chunk of my hard earned money to buy a car from them. So I can't buy into the author's claim that there's no place for business or traditional marketing messages on the net. I think there's a place for both traditional marketing and human to human communications. In any case, _The Cluetrain Manifesto_ is takes a fresh look at the net and what the heck the net is good for. =================================== Cultural Phenomena Napster Rap For months now, the music recording industry has been trying to shut down Napster, the online application service provider that allows individuals to share songs and other audio performances with each other. If you judged by the amount of press coverage the case has been getting, you'd think that the legal case is terribly complex. But you would be wrong. For some reason, the hype over all things Internet related clouds our ability to think straight. So it helps to try to separate the issue from the net with a little thought experiment. Suppose a wayward bunch of high school misfits starts up a speed metal rock band called "The Whiners in Dad's Garage". They record a couple of songs on a cassette tape using a 4 track recorder they borrowed from one of the band member's older sister and slap a home made label on it, thus creating the debut of their first album, "Spitballs and Outlaws." They make a couple of copies of this tape and pass their "album" out to their friends, telling them to listen and then pass it on to someone else. Anything illegal or unethical here? Nope. Not so long as there are no laws against poor taste. Now suppose Miss Susy Runaround receives one of the precious copies of "Spitballs and Outlaws" from one of her fellow cheerleaders during a break from practice. She loves the music so much, (or at least she lusts for the lead singer so much), that she decides to help promote The Whiners' inevitable ascendency to MTV Fame and Fortune by bouncing down to her local Wal-Mart, buying some blank cassette tapes, spending $2.00 per tape from her precious allowance, and making copies of "Spitballs and Outlaws" to give to her friends. Anything illegal or unethical here? Nope. And who would dare stop young love anyway? Now suppose Miss Susy, agog at her ability to boost the popularity of The Whiners among the pom-pom crowd, decides that there are other musical acts, namely The Backstreet Boys, that are equally deserving of her devotions. So she bops back to the Wal-Mart and buys another stack of blank cassette tapes. She proceeds to make copies of the Backstreet Boys latest CD, "Millennium" and give them out to her friends. Anything illegal or unethical here? Oh yeah. You betcha. On the back of the CD, right under Brian Littrell's grinning mug is a tiny little statement that says, "copyright 1999 - BMG Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws." Susy has clearly violated BMG's copyright on the "millennium" CD. Presumably BMG wants the cheerleaders to all go spend their allowance on a personal copy of the Backstreet Boys' CD. Fair enough. Whether she knew it or not. Susy agreed to not make unauthorized copies of the Backstreet Boys CD when she bought it and now she's broken that agreement. She's violated copyright law. Now, at most there are 20 girls on Susy's cheer leading squad and even if Susy made an illegal copy for every girl on the squad it's unlikely that anyone at BMG would care or even notice. But if there were legions of Backstreet Boys-infatuated cheerleaders all across the U.S. of A doing the same thing. BMG might start to get worried. The "lost" revenue might start adding up enough to put a minor dent in BMG's profits. Now, here comes the trick question. Who should BMG sue? A) Susy and her tape dubbing friends, B) Wal-Mart, or C) the manufacturer of the cassette tapes? Take all the time you need to consider your answer carefully. An ethical purist would of course answer. "A) Susy and her tape dubbing friends." They are, after all, the ones that violated the copyright agreement. Even if you have a little trouble with the concept of punishing those who are the ones that actually do wrong. You could arrive at the right answer through a process of elimination. Does it make any sense, hypothetically speaking, to sue Wal-Mart because they did not require Susy to sign an agreement to not do anything illegal with the tapes before selling them to her? Is Wal-Mart responsible for Susy's actions after she leaves the store? Does it make any sense to sue the manufacturer of the cassette tapes on the grounds that they are facilitating copyright violations? Is it reasonable to expect them to somehow create cassette tapes that can only be used for legal purposes and can't be used for illegal purposes? And what of The Whiners in Dad's Garage? Remember them? Assume for the moment that BMG has no interest in signing up a band for which no amount of air brushing can remove the pimples from its publicity photos, even if they do know all of four chords instead of the traditional three. Is it an acceptable legal remedy to outlaw the use of cassette tapes for distributing music in order to make sure Susy does not violate copyright law even if it prevents The Whiners In Dad's Garage from using cassette tapes to distribute their music and pick up chicks? The ethical purist would, of course, answer, "No." It's just as important to make sure that The Whiners In Dad's Garage have the ability to distribute their music as it is to protect BMG's copyright. Maybe even more important. Let's look at a side issue. Does it matter how much Susy paid for the cassette tapes? Would your answer change from A) to B) or C) if Susy paid $1.00 per tape instead of $2.00 per tape? Suppose Wal-Mart ran a promotion in which they were giving away free blank tapes for anyone who would walk into their store and look around for a while? Suppose Susy more or less got her cassette tapes for free. (She just had to suffer the indignity of looking at clothing of non-GAP origin in order to get her free blank cassette tapes.) Would your answer change from A) to B) or C)? Is it suddenly Wal-Mart's fault that Susy violated the copyright law? The ethical purist would, of course, answer, "No." Moving back to the world of the Internet, replace Wal-Mart with Napster and replace cassette tapes with MP3 files. If the Whiner's In Dad's Garage record "Spitballs and Outlaws" as a collection of MP3 files. And Susy forwards these files to all of her friends. Is there an ethical problem here? Nope. If Susy converts her favorite songs from the Backstreet Boys "Millennium" CD into MP3 files and sends them to her friends, is there an ethical problem? You betcha. She has still violated copyright law and infringed on BMG's copyright. Who should be sued in a court of law to remedy the copyright violation? Susy, of course. Is it fair to hold Napster responsible for Susy's actions? No way. Is it fair to block The Whiners In Dad's Garage from using Napster and MP3 files to distribute their so-called art just because someone _might_ use the technology to break copyright law? No. The Whiners have as much right to the technology as anyone else. Does the fact that Napster is an essentially free service (all you have to do is endure the web site advertising) change the fact that Susy is still the one responsible for the copyright violation? No. And yet, from all indications, the recording industry is more interested in shutting down the service that Napster provides than it is actually trying to remedy the copyright violations. Perhaps the industry realizes that sending a legal notice threatening a lawsuit if Susy doesn't cease her copyright infringements to her and her Dad might alienate her from her favorite Boy Band and tend to make her less enthusiastic about buying next year's Backstreet Boys CD. Not good for business. Perhaps the recording industry realizes that they can't possibly pursue every single small case of copyright infringement that they hear about. So instead they are trying to shut down the distribution channel instead of stopping the violators. This would at least severely reduce the ability to infringe on their copyrights. And if The Whiners in Dad's Garage are denied access to a cool new technology that lets them spread their music around to their friends for free, does the recording industry care? Not likely. After all, there are only so many hours between cheer leading practice. Susy can only listen to a certain amount of music. As far as the recording industry is concerned, the fewer competitors for Susy's devotion and allowance money, the better. After all, this is the recording industry we're talking about, not ethical purists. =================================== Movie Review "Hollow Man" ** 1/2 Also Known as "Gray's Anatomy Goes On A Rampage" Kevin Bacon plays Sebastian Caine, a megalomaniac scientist leading a team of researchers in a secret government project that's learning how to turn people invisible. The tricky part, it turns out, is making them visible again. Alas, being invisible, tends to make people more cranky, irritable, and aggressive. Trouble ensues, when Dr. Crane, who's already more than a bit edgy, decides that only he has the right to be the first human test subject. I liked seeing Kevin Bacon play the disagreeable, yet genius mad scientist. It's probably one of his better roles of late. The special effects are darn impressive, even by today's high standards. The scenes where he slowly phase shifts were especially creepy because you slowly get to see all his innards exposed. And he truly looks like one of those anatomy models. But like so many movies these days, the movie draws out the Big Finish with two or three too many cliff hangers. =================================== Book Review _The Florence King Reader_ by Florence King *** Perhaps best known for here acerbic columns in "The Misanthrope's Corner" of The National Review, Florence King has a reputation for shrewdly exposing the folly's both the high-brow and low-brow elements of modern culture. Looking back over the decades with he in, _The Florence King Reader_ makes you realize just how intensely she hates everything in the world. No way could anyone sustain such intense barrages of social criticism for so long without being sincerely worked up about it. In The Florence King Reader, we get samplings of essays from here early books, _Southern Ladies and Gentlemen_, _WASP: Where Is Thy Sting_, and _He: An Irreverent Look At The American Male_. Among these essays, _The Gay Confederation_ is perhaps the most relevant today. In this essay she indulges in stereotyping of the gay man in the south to such an extreme that one is tempted, (and only tempted!) to enjoy the caricature before roundly dismissing it out of hand. Further into the book, we're treated to an excerpt from a "bodice ripper" book she wrote in the 70's, which is particularly interesting considering the corner of the sexual revolution she inhabits, We also get a smattering of book reviews she wrote for The Raleigh News and Observer as well as columns for the National Review. Each and everyone apparently written in the throes of indigestion and inebriation, Florence King's command of the written language is especially impressive given these circumstances. =================================== Book Review _All Tomorrow's Parties_ by William Gibson *** In All Tomorrow's Parties, William Gibson continues some of the long running story lines he's developed in other works, and it might be tempting to dismiss it as just another cyberpunk novel. But that would be terribly unfair for several reasons. First, like all of Gibson's other novels, it's a really good cyberpunk novel. We get the usual cast of characters in this one. There's the fellow who lives online practically becoming virtual himself, though it's slowly driving him insane to the point he becomes the mad prophet screaming in the wilderness who makes just enough sense to scare everyone. We've got a streetwise tough guy, just using his muscle trying to get through the day. We've got lost children of various ages. We've got several ex-girfriends wandering around. And of course, we have the same artificial intelligencers which were introduced in previous novels. To the usual cast of characters, Gibson has added some new flavors, the assassin who takes a spiritual approach to his work was particularly interesting. Second, Gibson is not as enamored with the virtual world as he used to be. Obviously he's been spending more time online since he first hit his fame and fortune a few years back. In All Tomorrow's Party's technology is still the driving and prevalent agent of social change in the world, but it's also incredibly frustrating. Instead of people seamlessly augmenting themselves with technology, living half in and half out of the virtual world, we see people being frustrated with the technology. For example, one character is given a cheap pair of virtual glasses from the convenience store he used to work at. In theory they are supposed to provide maps and directions, but the problem is they keep showing Our Hero maps of Brazil instead of San Francisco where the action takes place. I think it's sort of Gibson's version of a running joke. But most importantly, the remarkable thing about this book is it's density. I think Gibson was experimenting with this novel. I think he was seeing just how far he could push the "crammed prose" style of cyberpunk without it breaking down. As a result we get a novel that's a scant 276 pages in the hard back. edition and will probably be much less in the paper back. Most chapters are just two or three pages long. But the writing is so dense I often found myself having to stop reading after every couple of pages and just stew on it for a while, trying to absorb all the nuances and implications of what I just read. It wasn't exactly light, fluffy, reading. It was challenging work to read this novel, but it was worth it. =================================== Movie Review "Drowning Mona" ** 1/2 Mona Dearly (Bette Midler) is not exactly the most beloved person in her small town. In fact, everyone pretty much hates her. And when the brakes on her Yugo fail on the way to work one morning, causing her to drive off a cliff and into a river, no one is exactly teary when she drowns. But when Chief Wyatt Rash discovers that the Yugo was sabotaged he's forced to open a murder investigation. Problem is, everyone in town is a suspect. As he investigates the murder of Mona, we are introduced to a small town so filled with white trash, it makes Jerry Springer look sophisticated. Low morals, low aspirations, low IQ all around. The only two good people in the whole movie, the Police Chief's future sin-in-law seem to have any ambition or scruples at all. So why does all the evidence point to him? The plot isn't the best I've seen, but the movie is filled with lots of good laughs and amusing characters. Definitely worth a rental. =================================== Current Events Olympic Spirit: Then And Now Note: This essay originally appeared in issue 16 of _Stuck In Traffic_ As the Centennial Olympic Games open in Atlanta, it's fitting to think about what makes the Olympic Games special. Amid all the hype, the sponsorships, the news headlines, and the pageantry, it's easy to forget why we're holding them in the first place. The Olympics, after all, are far more than just an opportunity to sell T-shirts and baseball caps by the millions. The history of the Olympics can be traced all the way back to the days of ancient Greece, then known as the center of the civilized Western world. So we only know about them through legend and myth. But the ideas behind the Olympics are clear. Every four years, nations set aside their differences and people traveled to Greece to participate in games of sport. Soldiers set down their swords and spears and left the battlefield and headed for Greece when the time came. People who were enemies one day suddenly became comrades and competitors in the Olympic Games. Whether this is literally true or not is irrelevant. That is the myth that has survived, that is the archetype in our consciousness. The Modern Olympic Games, are quite different and they've lost some of that spirit from the Ancient Games. For one thing, nations don't stop their antagonism toward each other for the Olympics. These modern times move far to quickly for that. The wars continue, the battles rage on. Two countries may be at war with each other while individuals from the two countries are peaceably running marathon races against each other at the Olympic Games. But worse than that even, governments and political activists all stripes too often try to use the Olympics to further their political goals or make a political statement. The politically disenfranchised have on more than one occasion taken Olympic athletes as hostages, interrupting the games, terrorizing the world, and worst of all denying innocent people the opportunity to live their dream of Olympic competition. Who can forget the hostage standoff at the Munich games? But it's not just the politically disenfranchised that have ruined the Olympics in the past. Governments themselves have done so as well. On more than one occasion, a government has "boycotted" the Olympics by forbidding athletes from within its jurisdiction from participating in the Olympic events. The arrogance of such boycotts are stunning, as if the boycotting nation were saying, "You can't possibly hold the Olympic games without us, so we'll just take our ball and go home." The United States has done this in the past, and the former Soviet Union even went so far as to start their own pseudo-Olympic games, called the "Good Will Games," in a bald attempt at coopting the Olympics and controlling who gets to attend. The Olympic Organizing Committee does its best to prevent the Olympics from becoming a showcase for political statements, but the media coverage is just too irresistible for politicos who want to get their message out fast. Every nation on earth has reporters covering the Olympics. There is probably a higher concentration of media at the Olympics than any other event on earth. And where there are cameras, you'll find political activists trying to get their message out. But it's not just the media concentration that threatens to turn the Olympics into media showcases for politics. Part of the problem lies in the nature of the modern Olympics themselves. The modern Olympics have been portrayed in the last few decades not as human contests as much as national contests. The image portrayed by the Olympic organizers is not one of athletes coming together, but of nation-states coming together by sending teams to the Olympics that represent their country. It is a subtle but important difference. By treating the athletes not as individuals, but as "teams" representing a nation, the nations take center stage. For example, the opening ceremonies always have all the athletes marching into an arena, segregated by nation, each marching in under their country's flag. And it is exciting to see all the flags flying. The pageantry is nice and it makes for good TV. But the athletes tend to get lost in all the hoopla. It's not just that the national symbols overshadow the individual athletes, the Olympic games almost invariably turn into competitions between the national teams. We count the medals that each nation wins and compare how many medals "we" have won against the number of medals "they" have won. "They" almost invariably being the nation that we're currently at war with or antagonistic with. The Japanese may be whipping our butts in foreign trade and education, but we can beat the hell out of them in basketball and we've got the medals to prove it. Remember how the everyone in the United States was suddenly a hockey fan when it looked like we were going to beat the Evil Empire in this particular sport? All this is a very sad commentary on the modern Olympics, and we in the United States, of all peoples, should know better. The worst struggles in our nation's history, the issues that have caused us the most angst, have always centered around the unwise segregation of people for arbitrary and inconsequential traits. The American Revolution was born largely out of the belief that "all men are created equal" and that one's background, the accident of ones birth, confers no special privilege on a person. No one has the right to rule you just because they have "royal blood." And of course the whole issue of slavery has been fundamental in forming our national character. Almost from the very founding of this nation, we have been striving to rid ourselves of an institutionalized discrimination based on the accident of one's race. And even though we perhaps haven't quite reached the point where we are a "color blind nation," we've made tremendous strides in the right direction. If we can accept that fact that men and women should be judged not by the color of the skin, but by the character of their souls and the merit of their accomplishments, is it such a stretch to accept that the participants of the Olympic games should judged by their speed, grace, and strength instead of the accident of which flag they happened to be born under? Why is this so difficult for us to do? Part of the reason is that the Olympics appear to be _designed_ to glorify the nation-states instead of the individual athletes. That's why the athletes are segregated by race during the opening ceremonies. That's why the athletes wear their national flags on their uniforms. That's why the winner's national anthem is played when the medals are awarded. That's why the winners' national flags are hung from the rafters during the awards ceremonies, always with the gold medal winner's flag in a dominant position over the second and third place winners' flags. That's why the medal winnings are always reported by nation. The symbolism of these arrangements is unmistakable. A more proper way to hold the Olympics, one that would be true to the original Olympic spirit, would be to ban all mentions of nationality from the games. The one exception might be for cases where identifying nationality would help in the logistics of running the events. There's no reason why the opening ceremonies have to segregate all the athletes by nation. They can march in together, without national flags. If you want the visual pageantry of flags, let them carry the Olympic flag and streamers of the Olympic colors. When medals are awarded at the conclusion of an event, it would be more fitting to announce the winner's name than to play his or her national anthem. And I think it would be fitting to let the winner address the crowd for a minute or two. I would much rather listen to an athlete say "Hi" to the folks back home than to listen to another a national anthem. A responsible news organization would not report the tallies of medal winnings by country, even if other organizations stooped so low as to do so. A news organization should simply report the names of the winners. It's perhaps reasonable to report where the athlete is from, since spectators do tend to be curious about where the winners are from. But it should only be done in the context of painting a picture of the individual athlete, helping the spectator get to know a little more about the personal side of the athlete. The focus of the Olympics should always be on the individual athletes because they are the real marvel. They are the reason we do this. They are what's impressive. It's the dedication a person has to have to excel in a sport so well that they qualify for the Olympic games that impresses. Not that they are from a particular country. The Olympics, as the ancients' intended them to be, are symbolic reminders of the ability of each and every one of us to transform ourselves through sheer force of will. They show us that we can become "super human," or as you prefer, they give us a glimpse of God. It's a shame that the modern Olympics games have coopted the spirit of the ancient Olympic games and turned them into to a glorification of The State. =================================== True Stories WorldCon 2000 Trip Report WorldCon in Chicago marked a milestone for me in my fannish development. This is the first con in which I spent more time making the rounds of the various bid parties and other sorts of parties than I did participating in any of the con programming. I feel vaguely guilty about it. I almost feel like I played hooky from school or something. Registration was a breeze on Thursday morning. I hit the registration area Thursday morning, just as they were opening. I had expected massive crowds lined up waiting to pick up their registration. But I just walked right up to the counter and didn’t have to wait at all. The convention site at the Hyatt was a nice enough convention facility, though it suffered from the usual hotel conference syndrome. The panel rooms were freezing! The Hyatt was somewhat confusing in its layout. The convention was held in a series of twisty little passages, all alike underneath the Hyatt. They bordered on catacomb-like. The pocket program books supplied to us by the con had maps in them, which helped some, but there were lots of people wandering around lost. The few panels I managed to attend were interesting. I attended a panel on how to review movies, since I like to review all the movies I see, for my website. I also attended Bruce Schnier’s Cryptography panels, which was equally interesting. But I managed to miss the Guest of Honor speeches, the Hugos, and the masquerade. I also missed all the live performances, like “Faith,” a science fiction opera, “The Martian Chronicles,” and the “Don’t Quit Your Day Job” Players. Like I said, I feel like I played hooky from the con. I did manage to hit the art show, which I thought was unusually good. Far and above better than the art shows in recent conventions that I have attended. There was a collage artist that I particularly liked and an oil painter that was able to create some very realistic looking fantasy landscapes. And of course the Bob Eggleton stuff was good. One of the interesting things about con art shows is that there are some artists that show their work at these shows that transcend the genre and others that are stuck in the genre. I find myself attracted more to the artists that step out of the genre assumptions and do more “mainstream” stuff. The collage artist, for example, had a work called “Venus Unveiled,”. From a distance this work appeared to be a view of a planet from space. But when you got close to it, you discovered that the planet was a collage of hundreds and hundreds of small print words clipped from various publications combined with small pictures of beautiful, Romanesque ladies, Aphrodite presumably. The dealer’s room was not the biggest that I’ve ever seen, but it had lots of the sort of stuff that I like. I’m not big into comics, I’m more of a book person and the dealer’s room seemed to be heavy into booksellers. So I spent a lot of time plowing through paper backs. A great way to spend a few hours! As I’m sure everyone has heard by now, Toronto won the bid for the World Con in 2003. And they deserved it. They clearly had the best bid parties! They had a great mix of booze, junk food, and good company. And other bid parties ad these too. But the Toronto folks also had door give-aways of books and cool trinkets and trash. Japanese fandom is putting together a bid to host a world con in 2007 and they had a terrific bid party too. They were giving out cool head bands to people who pre-supported them. At their bid party they had a wide variety of Japanese junk food, some of which was good and some of which was really strange. They also served sake and plum wine, which I sampled. The Svengali party was notable for it’s 80’s dance music, it’s 70’s disco lights bizarrely colored drinks complete with those little useless umbrella’s in them. Sort of a lounge effect, if you’re into that sort of thing. The slime party had it’s usual spiked jello shots and pineapple bits super-saturated with some sort of booze. The Mystery God Confusion party had a pagan religious theme, complete with a goddess walking around offering sacraments of chocolate covered cookies. Mondo cool. I told the goddess that I’d be back later to worship her, but she refused my devotions. Sigh. There was a hoax bid party which I can’t spell, except for phonetically. It was the chitzineetza bid, which is the location of some ancient Incan ruins. According to the bid committee, the Incan calendar predicts the end of the world in 2012 so they figure it’s a good chance for an end of the world party. Their bid party was unusual in that they made ice cream with liquid nitrogen. I wasn’t sure what the connection between liquid nitrogen, ice cream, and the Incans is, but it was fun anyway. The Boston crowd had their usual bid party and next to the Toronto Party, it was the busiest one. But I didn’t stick around too long in it. There was no place to sit and hardly a place to stand. Likewise with the Philcon party. It was a large boisterous crowd of good natured people. But I just couldn’t stay in there for very long. The last party I attended was the OddCon party, aka, the Cow Con. It’s being organized by some fans in Madison Wisconsin. They win my award for the most bizarre room decorations because they had a shrine to a glowing cow head. Go figure. Chicago is full of wonderful things to see and do. Or so I’m told. I only did a limited amount of venturing out. One afternoon I went out to Lunch with Diane Kurlecz to Joe’s Be Bop House for barbecue. Very good. Of course, since this is Chicago, it was beef barbecue with a reasonably good sauce, though being from Texas I expected a little bit spicier. On Sunday I went to the Navy Pier with my friend Pat Hario to see the display of tall ships that were there. The crowds were staggering and we only got to board two ships. But we were able to see the others from the dock just fine. It’s amazing to see all the hand made rigging and the precise way all the lines are coiled and tied. I’m not much into sailing and things nautical, but I was nonetheless fascinated by these ships. It’s difficult to articulate why. I think it’s something to do with the fact that it’s rare that you see something so sophisticated and complex that’s obviously hand crafted. I saw so many good friends this con that I felt right at home. I saw many, if not all of the “Lemmings” that I toured Australia with last year. It seems like any time I sat down, one of them walked by and struck up a conversation. And my fellow lemmings introduced me to many folks that were lemmings in previous years. I also had a chance to meet many of the people from the TurboCharged Party Animal apa that I belong to. It’s bizarre to finally be able to put faces to names I’ve seen in print for the past year. I’m terrible at predicting what people are going to look like! No one was the least bit the way I imagined! And finally, I ran into several of the fans from my local area. So this was the first con for me where the people and the parties and the socializing were more important to me than the programming. Best Button seen at Con: "Uniquely maladjusted, but fun to be with." Best Bumper sticker: "I drive too fast to worry about cholesterol." ======================================= About Stuck In Traffic Stuck In Traffic is a monthly magazine dedicated to evaluating current events, examining cultural phenomena, and sharing true stories. Why "Stuck In Traffic"? Because getting stuck in traffic is good for you. It's an opportunity to think, ponder, and reflect on all things, from the personal to the global. As Robert Pirsig wrote in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, "Let's consider a reevaluation of the situation in which we assume that the stuckness now occurring, the zero of consciousness, isn't the worst of all possible situations, but the best possible situation you could be in. After all, it's exactly this stuckness that Zen Buddhists go to so much trouble to induce...." Contact Information All queries, submissions, subscription requests, comments, and hate-mail should be sent to Calvin Powers via E-mail (powers@attglibal.net). Copyright Notice Stuck In Traffic is published and copyrighted by Calvin Powers who reserves all rights. Individual articles are copyrighted by their respective authors. Unsigned articles are authored by Calvin Powers. Availability The Web based version of Stuck In Traffic can be found at http://www.StuckInTraffic.com/ To subscribe to the free e-mail edition of Stuck In Traffic, go to http://www.onelist.com/community/StuckInTraffic Trades If you publish a 'zine and would like to trade issues or ad-space, send your zine or ad to either address above. Alliances Stuck in Traffic supports the Blue Ribbon Campaign for free speech online. See http://www.eff.org/blueribbon.html for more information. Stuck In Traffic also supports the Golden Key Campaign for electronic privacy and security. See http://www.eff.org/goldkey.html ==================================================================