This is quite an accurate description of life in 2010, as enunciated by the late George Carlin. Please be forewarned: there are a few four-letter-words in this video.
Monday, August 9, 2010
George Carlin ~ The American Dream
This is quite an accurate description of life in 2010, as enunciated by the late George Carlin. Please be forewarned: there are a few four-letter-words in this video.
Breaking Points & Hungry Ghosts
Dear Jack,
Arlene Goldbard is the president of the Board of The Shalom Center. She is an activist on behalf of community-based art, and writes a weekly blog that integrates issues of public concern with art, ethics, and personal spiritual growth. This is her most recent thought-piece. You can subscribe free to her blog or post comments here.
Shalom, salaam, shantih, peace -- Arthur
Breaking Points and Hungry Ghosts
Sometimes life delivers moments of irrefutable insight, shattering fragile illusions like so many soap-bubbles. Remember that post-Katrina telethon where Kanye West said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people"?
There was a great commotion, the President's compassionate conservatism was vigorously asserted, West was condemned for incivility. Now, five years later, take a look at New Orleans-at all of its grassroots creativity and determination and all the official indifference and moral constipation that have transpired-and tell me with a straight face that West was wrong.
David Stockman isn't Kanye West, to be sure, but it's worth giving a little attention to what this Reagan-era Director of the Office of Management and Budget, closely identified with "trickle-down economics," wrote in The New York Times:
It is not surprising, then, that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of Americans - paid mainly from the Wall Street casino - received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent - mainly dependent on Main Street's shrinking economy - got only 12 percent. This growing wealth gap is not the market's fault. It's the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.
The day of national reckoning has arrived.
In recent weeks, a great heap of political detritus has been accumulating: piled atop BP's display of corporate self-regard and ineptitude are new revelations about white-collar predators (such as the Wyly brothers of Dallas, lavish Swift Boat campaign donors, charged with massive security fraud and insider trading); the unconscionably long time Congress took to pass an extension of unemployment benefits (while so many members blithely supported tax cuts for the rich) and the unprecedented numbers who are not helped even by that legislation; the government's absolute failure to pass new job-creation legislation, the President's refusal to even propose it….
The stench is so high, it cannot be ignored. Within the last week, for instance, The New York Times carried these three articles:
David Stockman's op-ed, in which he said "If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing," and blamed Republican policies for "the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy."
a column by Bob Herbert, more or less Stockman's ideological opposite, describing findings by economics professor Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. Sum explains that corporations "threw out far more workers and hours than they lost output. Here's what happened: At the end of the fourth quarter in 2008, you see corporate profits begin to really take off, and they grow by the time you get to the first quarter of 2010 by $572 billion. And over that same time period, wage and salary payments go down by $122 billion." Herbert's column is well worth reading in its entirety. It explains that corporations' cash position is at an all-time high, and still they are cutting jobs, salaries, and benefits. "Worker productivity has increased dramatically," writes Herbert, "but the workers themselves have seen no gains from their increased production. It has all gone to corporate profits. This is unprecedented in the postwar years, and it is wrong."
A column by Paul Krugman, citing "growing evidence that our governing elite just doesn't care - that a once-unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal," and condemning Congress for "sitting on its hands, with Republicans and conservative Democrats refusing to spend anything to create jobs, and unwilling even to mitigate the suffering of the jobless." "I'd like to imagine," Krugman concludes, "that public outrage will prevent this outcome. But while Americans are indeed angry, their anger is unfocused. And so I worry that our governing elite, which just isn't all that into the unemployed, will allow the jobs slump to go on and on and on."
When the social fabric becomes tattered from neglect, fragments and threads begin to break off and tumble through the Zeitgeist. The appalled fury that infuses the recent writings of Stockman, Herbert, and Krugman-hardly wild-eyed radicals-is popping up everywhere.
Three times this past week, people I know have made reference to the Buddhist concept of "hungry ghosts." We have an epidemic of people in high places who fit this elegant and succinct description by Mark Epstein, from his book Thoughts Without A Thinker:
The Hungry Ghosts are probably the most vividly drawn metaphors in the Wheel of Life. Phantomlike creatures with withered limbs, grossly bloated bellies, and long thin necks, the Hungry Ghosts in many ways represent a fusion of rage and desire. Tormented by unfulfilled cravings and insatiably demanding of impossible satisfactions, the Hungry Ghosts are searching for gratification for old unfulfilled needs whose time has passed. They are beings who have uncovered a terrible emptiness within themselves, who cannot see the impossibility of correcting something that has already happened.
I think of these men who have more money than needed for a hundred lifetimes-indeed, the scale of whose wealth attests to the fact that their hungers cannot be satisfied by material possessions-and whose desire for more, channeled into business aggression, has obliterated the simple human compassion they would otherwise feel for those who've been made destitute and miserable by their decisions.
But even more than them, I think of the elected officials who do their bidding, promulgating the policies that allow, encourage, and underwrite this drain on the body politic. They are hungry ghosts too, craving the approval of those to whom they have surrendered the power of office.
Many individuals who rise to power in these systems are in possession of formidable drive, talent, and energy. Some switch has been flipped, and the deep desire that accompanies such abilities gets channeled into a type of wanting marinated in surplus aggression: more money, position, the power to dominate others. They may carry tremendous latent capacity to express and experience other types of desire-to be seen and see truly, to be loved for oneself, to experience the satisfactions that only come if one is willing to stand unmasked, risking extreme vulnerability. If they accept that those capacities cannot be expressed in the world they inhabit, everything is channeled into acquisition and dominance until it becomes second nature. And instead of benefiting from the remarkable gifts such individuals could bring to public and private relationship, everyone affected by their actions suffers the consequences of their distortions.
If wealth (or the approval of those who have it) really satisfied these men, they would stop when they had enough to buy whatever they wanted. But without understanding that the source of their appetite is something broken in themselves, some past betrayal or deformity of character fed and bloated by a corporate culture that welcomes and creates hungry ghosts, they will not stop.
With increasing regularity, Facebook friends have been posting links to this starkly profane and obscene (be forewarned) video clip by the late George Carlin called "The American Dream." In the 3-minute clip, Carlin asserts with devastating simplicity that the nation is owned by oligarchs who "want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that, that doesn't help them. That's against their interests."
I know (I was going to write "I believe," but that is too weak to carry the experiential basis of my conviction)-I know that every human being is capable of conscious awareness. I know that it is never too late, never too far, never impossible to choose redemption by turning away from bad acts and investing the same energy in acts that heal the harm you have done. Almost always, I write into that possibility, hoping to contribute in some small way to the awakening that remains possible even for those gripped by terrible distortions of character. But just this minute, I am with Carlin: there really isn't any way around the horror, outrage, and disgust I feel at the spectacle of insatiable wanting now being exposed daily to the American public.
Working on my new book has been engaging me with these questions. From my perch outside the halls of economic and political power, it is clear that something is very wrong, something much more significant than the usual dance of interests and agendas.
But I also think the brokenness is becoming clear to some people within those worlds, who see that the short-term gains redounding to the multinationals and oligarchs cannot go on forever, that ultimately, they will not be immune from the consequences of their own actions. I wrote a few weeks ago about IBM's biennial CEO study, acknowledging in executives' own words that "Most CEOs seriously doubt their ability to cope with rapidly escalating complexity." Meanwhile, righteous anger is bursting through here and there: I recommend a viewing of New York Representative Andrew Weiner's obdurate anger at his fellow officials' prevarication on support for 9/11 responders' healthcare.
Yet the countervailing movement to enlarge liberty and possibility advances. The extension of full civil rights to sexual minorities still has many hurdles to go following yesterday's ruling that California's ban on same-sex marriage violates the Constitution, for example. But the trajectory is clear and-where I depart from Carlin's certainty-I don't think even the people he sees as owners of this nation can stop it.
I will never lose sight of the possibility of redemption, never stop pointing to it with all the energy at my disposal. But right this minute, when things seem to be hardening into a breaking-point as crisp as a dry twig, the most important thing to remember is that there are many, many more people who are not benefiting from this system than those who are, and that it is time to awaken that force for good. There are so many opportunities to take healing action right now. But I want to speak up for baby steps that can really help: for the power of direct human relationship to counter the falsehoods that gush through the media.
What if every day this week, you and I parted the veil of denial and had one entirely real conversation about this with someone new? What if we started by expressing our shock and outrage at the gap between corporate profits and hiring policies? Or Congressional votes on unemployment benefits versus tax cuts?
What if we came out and said that the governing elite's utter indifference to suffering shamed and contaminated all of us? What if we asked our friends or neighbors how that felt to them, what that churned up in their stomachs? What if we asked them to consider what has been broken in the hearts, heads, bodies, and spirits of these men possessed by insatiable hungers, and how they might be stopped from harming others with their brokenness?
What if we dropped the conventional language and inside-baseball that passes for political discourse in the media, and spoke openly of hungry ghosts?
"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people," said Martin Luther King. It feels like we are very close to a breaking-point. Best to repent while there's still time to heal.
I don't think of myself as a patriotic person: I descend from a long line of nomads and immigrants, never quite home. But the truth is, I love the hope of liberty, the promise of democracy, the latent truth that may yet emerge in this country; and when I visit other places, I learn just how American I truly am. Otis Redding's version of this song is inarguably definitive, and you can find it on YouTube. But somehow the exhaustion of Cat Power's version suits the mood: "I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)."
Monday, June 21, 2010
Tigger, April 1990 - June 19, 2010
So, after the second Passover Seder of 2007, which I attended at the apartment of the people who were giving me Tigger, I walked home with Tigger in a carrier.
I soon reached my apartment on Beaucourt Street, and opened the door of the carrier. Tigger went out, and immediately hid in a lower kitchen cupboard. He remained in that cupboard for about two days, coming out only to get food and use the litter box.
Eventually, Tigger got tired of living in a cupboard, and got used to living in a new apartment. There was, of course, the issue of which cat would be the dominant one.. At first, Ouija, having been there longer, used to swat at Tigger whenever he came near her, Eventually, Tigger began to swat back. Finally, a point was reached where they could sit a couple of feet away from each other without fighting.
At first, Tigger seemed a bit more rambunctious than Ouija. He still had claws on his back paws, and I often felt them when he was crawling all over me. As time went on, he seemed to become more gentle. I remember him coming onto my bed a day or two after my father had died, and I felt almost in a state of bliss with Tigger being beside me.
In late May 2008, I came home one day to find that Ouija had died, and now Tigger was the only cat that I had.
Tigger remained with me through the troubles
of the following year, and he moved with me to my present apartment on Bourret Street. He eventually got used to the new apartment.
But Father Time eventually began to catch up with Tigger. This past April, Tigger turned 20 years old. He was already starting to walk more slowly, and he seemed to be dragging one of his back legs a little. Around the first week in April, one side of his face puffed up, and one morning, I awoke to see blood all over his body. The veterinarian I brought him to concluded that he must have gotten a puncture wound in one of his cheeks, and the swollen cheek must have been the result of the wound getting infected. The infected area had then opened up, leaving him all bloody. He was given an antibiotic shot, and I was instructed to apply cold compresses to his cheek three times a day. Further tests revealed that his blood sugar was elevated, so from then on, he was given Purina DM cat food, which was designed for diabetic cats.
When he got home from the trip to the veterinarian, Tigger was very tired and only wanted to sleep. However, within a few days, he started to perk up. The new food must have agreed with him. He began to gain a little bit of weight. He suddenly acquired new urges to climb up and jump onto things, even though his coordination was a bit off. He started wanting to sleep on top of a table. Eventually, he wanted to spend much of his time on a shelf in a wall unit which was behind the table.
But the improvement in his condition was not permanent. One day, I heard a thrashing noise behind me. Tigger had fallen off the shelf and into the space behind the wall unit. He was having trouble extricating himself from there. A few minutes later, he managed to crawl out on his own.
Tigger seemed to remain about the same until about a week ago. A friend visiting me noticed that Tigger looked a lot scrawnier than he had looked a week earlier. On Thursday night, July 17, Hydro - Quebec had scheduled a power outage for 11 PM. As I was struggling to finish with the computer before the power went out, I heard a thrashing noise behind me. Tigger had again fallen behind the wall unit, and was lying face up on a folded cardbord box. At that point, the power went out, and everything was plunged into darkness.
After the power went on again, I was able to extricate Tigger from his predicament. I then removed everything from behind the wall unit, and pushed the wall unit closer to the wall. I hoped that there would now no longer be any room for Tigger to be able to fall behind the wall unit.
But now, I noticed that there was a gap between the wall unit and the table in front of it. I didn't know if I should now move the table closer to the wall unit as well. Within a couple of hours, I had my answer. There was a noise, and Tigger was now on the floor under the table. He had presumably fallen from the table. The table was now moved closer to the wall unit.
Friday, July 18, was an extremely hot day, and I had a lot of trouble moving around. So I did not find it strange that Tigger didn't feel like moving around much either. I went out for a few hours in the evening, and came home to find Tigger curled up on a sofa chair and resting or sleeping.
I eventually went to bed myself and slept for a few hours, awaking at about 5:30 AM. I went to look in on Tigger, expecting him to have gone out onto the balcony when it became daylight. He was not on the balcony. I eventually found him sprawled on the floor near the sofa chair where I had last seen him. I had at first not noticed him in the still-darkened living room. I picked him up and sat in the sofa chair for a while with him. I was already crying, although I was not sure why. Eventually, he started to squirm around, and I put him down on the floor.
I went to bed, but I couldn't sleep. I went again to check on Tigger. He was sitting on the floor in the same place, but he seemed more alert and was lookin around.
I went to sleep for a few more hours. When I awoke, Tigger was no longer in the living room, and had apparently gone onto the balcony. I started to make myself breakfast, and then I saw Tigger stumbling into the living room. There was blood on the side of his face which had bled two months earlier, and there was also blood on his paw. I could not figure out what had happened. I am on the fourth floor, and the balcony is not attached to a fire escape. Could Tigger have been attacked by a crow?
The veterinary clinic where I had gone previously is open on Saturday mornings, but I did not know if the veterinarian herself was in that day. I had also been planning to go out that morning. I then remembered the instructions I had received on using cold compresses on Tigger. I used a cold compress, and then cradled Tigger for a while until he started to squirm. I put him down on the floor, and then noticed how he would try to stand up and then flop down on one side. He still seemed to be able to move around, as I started to daydream and then suddenly noticed that he was now several feet away from me.
He was now resting comfortably, so I decided to go away for a few hours and administer the cold compress when I got back. I would probably have to bring him to see the vet on Monday, as the clinic is not open on Sundays.
I went out, and immediately felt the heat outdoors. I felt that I had probably made the right decision in not attempting to bring him to the vet on such a hot day.
I arrived home around 2:30 PM. Tigger had now moved onto the balcony. He was on his side and breathing rapidly.
I had no idea what to do. I went indoors to drink some water. Before I could do anything, the phone rang. It was some idiot telemarketer trying to sell me something called "Solo". I screamed at the telemarketer and hung up. Within a minute, the phone rang again. I let the answering machine take it. It was obviously the same idiot, as he did not leave a message.
By that point, I felt that the best thing to do was to bring Tigger indoors and try to get him to drink water, even if I had to hold him up over the bowl to do so. I went back onto the balcony. Tigger had stopped panting, but he did not seem to be breathing. The flies were buzzing around his head, but he exhibhited no reaction to them. I brought him indoors, but there was no longer any movement from him. Tigger was gone.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
A few hours later, I spoke with a friend on the phone. She had had experience in dealing with another cat in his final hours. She felt that Tigger must have been having a series of mini strokes over the last few weeks. His falling off the wall unit and the table had probably occured because he had lost his sense of balance due to the mini strokes. The bleeding on the balcony may also been caused by a stroke rather than by an injury. And one last stroke probably killed him just as I was getting home. I am not a doctor or a veterinarian, so I don't know whether or not this conclusion makes any sense. And it is not feasible to autopsy a dead cat.
Farewell, sweet Tigger. In pacem, requies.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Sinéad O'Connor: The Pope's Apology for Sex Abuse in Ireland Seems Hollow
Sinéad O'Connor
The Washington Post
Sun, 28 Mar 2010 06:00 EDT
Sinéad O'Connor, Irish singer and voice of conscience
When I was a child, Ireland was a Catholic theocracy. If a bishop came walking down the street, people would move to make a path for him. If a bishop attended a national sporting event, the team would kneel to kiss his ring. If someone made a mistake, instead of saying, "Nobody's perfect," we said, "Ah sure, it could happen to a bishop."
The expression was more accurate than we knew. This month, Pope Benedict XVI wrote a pastoral letter of apology -- of sorts -- to Ireland to atone for decades of sexual abuse of minors by priests whom those children were supposed to trust. To many people in my homeland, the pope's letter is an insult not only to our intelligence, but to our faith and to our country. To understand why, one must realize that we Irish endured a brutal brand of Catholicism that revolved around the humiliation of children.
I experienced this personally. When I was a young girl, my mother -- an abusive, less-than-perfect parent -- encouraged me to shoplift. After being caught once too often, I spent 18 months in An Grianán Training Centre, an institution in Dublin for girls with behavioral problems, at the recommendation of a social worker. An Grianán was one of the now-infamous church-sponsored "Magdalene laundries," which housed pregnant teenagers and uncooperative young women. We worked in the basement, washing priests' clothes in sinks with cold water and bars of soap. We studied math and typing. We had limited contact with our families. We earned no wages. One of the nuns, at least, was kind to me and gave me my first guitar.
An Grianán was a product of the Irish government's relationship with the Vatican -- the church had a "special position" codified in our constitution until 1972. As recently as 2007, 98 percent of Irish schools were run by the Catholic Church. But schools for troubled youth have been rife with barbaric corporal punishments, psychological abuse and sexual abuse. In October 2005, a report sponsored by the Irish government identified more than 100 allegations of sexual abuse by priests in Ferns, a small town 70 miles south of Dublin, between 1962 and 2002. Accused priests weren't investigated by police; they were deemed to be suffering a "moral" problem. In 2009, a similar report implicated Dublin archbishops in hiding sexual abuse scandals between 1975 and 2004.
Why was such criminal behavior tolerated? The "very prominent role which the Church has played in Irish life is the very reason why abuses by a minority of its members were allowed to go unchecked," the 2009 report said.
Despite the church's long entanglement with the Irish government, Pope Benedict's so-called apology takes no responsibility for the transgressions of Irish priests. His letter states that "the Church in Ireland must first acknowledge before the Lord and before others the serious sins committed against defenceless children." What about the Vatican's complicity in those sins?
Benedict's apology gives the impression that he heard about abuse only recently, and it presents him as a fellow victim: "I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them." But Benedict's infamous 2001 letter to bishops around the world ordered them to keep sexual abuse allegations secret under threat of excommunication -- updating a noxious church policy, expressed in a 1962 document, that both priests accused of sex crimes and their victims "observe the strictest secret" and be "restrained by a perpetual silence."
Benedict, then known as Joseph Ratzinger, was a cardinal when he wrote that letter. Now that he sits in Saint Peter's chair, are we to believe that his position has changed? And are we to take comfort in last week's revelations that, in 1996, he declined to defrock a priest who may have molested as many as 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin?
Benedict's apology states that his concern is "above all, to bring healing to the victims." Yet he denies them the one thing that might bring them healing -- a full confession from the Vatican that it has covered up abuse and is now trying to cover up the cover up. Astonishingly, he invites Catholics "to offer up your fasting, your prayer, your reading of Scripture and your works of mercy in order to obtain the grace of healing and renewal for the Church in Ireland." Even more astonishing, he suggests that Ireland's victims can find healing by getting closer to the church -- the same church that has demanded oaths of silence from molested children, as occurred in 1975 in the case of Father Brendan Smyth, an Irish priest later jailed for repeated sexual offenses. After we stopped laughing, many of us in Ireland recognized the idea that we needed the church to get closer to Jesus as blasphemy.
To Irish Catholics, Benedict's implication -- Irish sexual abuse is an Irish problem -- is both arrogant and blasphemous. The Vatican is acting as though it doesn't believe in a God who watches. The very people who say they are the keepers of the Holy Spirit are stamping all over everything the Holy Spirit truly is. Benedict criminally misrepresents the God we adore. We all know in our bones that the Holy Spirit is truth. That's how we can tell that Christ is not with these people who so frequently invoke Him.
Irish Catholics are in a dysfunctional relationship with an abusive organization. The pope must take responsibility for the actions of his subordinates. If Catholic priests are abusing children, it is Rome, not Dublin, that must answer for it with a full confession and in a criminal investigation. Until it does, all good Catholics -- even little old ladies who go to church every Sunday, not just protest singers like me whom the Vatican can easily ignore -- should avoid Mass. In Ireland, it is time we separated our God from our religion, and our faith from its alleged leaders.
Almost 18 years ago, I tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on an episode of Saturday Night Live. Many people did not understand the protest -- the next week, the show's guest host, actor Joe Pesci, commented that, had he been there, "I would have gave her such a smack." I knew my action would cause trouble, but I wanted to force a conversation where there was a need for one; that is part of being an artist. All I regretted was that people assumed I didn't believe in God. That's not the case at all. I'm Catholic by birth and culture and would be the first at the church door if the Vatican offered sincere reconciliation.
As Ireland withstands Rome's offensive apology while an Irish bishop resigns, I ask Americans to understand why an Irish Catholic woman who survived child abuse would want to rip up the pope's picture. And whether Irish Catholics, because we daren't say "we deserve better," should be treated as though we deserve less.
Sinead O'Connor, a musician and mother of four, lives in Dublin.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Some Success at Last
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Isn't Microsoft Wonderful!
So far, I haven't been able to find the needed files on the Microsoft Download site, and Microsoft now charges $49.00 to deal with a technical support question. I just added a new topic in the MSFN forums, so perhaps some help will come from there.
Isn't Microsoft wonderful?
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Bei Mir Bist du Schoen - Aliya - Samara-Russia
The Yiddish song performed by the Aliya Ensemble of Russia
http://www.aliya47.hotmail.ru/historyA.htm
Friday, April 16, 2010
Ning Closing non-Premium Networks
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/apr/16/ning-social-network-cutbacks
Ning social network site is going from freemium to paid-for
Ning's new chief executive has announced that the site is going to shed staff, stop its free service and concentrate on its premium users. But it isn't the first to fail at the freemium approach, and it won't be the last.
Ning, which lets anyone set up their own social network service, is slashing staff numbers from 167 to 98 and changing its strategy. Recently-appointed chief executive Jason Rosenthal sent staff a memo that said: "we are going to change our strategy to devote 100% of our resources to building the winning product to capture this big opportunity" -- that being the premium service, not the one supported by advertising.
"We will phase out our free service. Existing free networks will have the opportunity to either convert to paying for premium services, or transition off of Ning," added Rosenthal.
Over its life, the service has received about $120m in venture capital backing, but does not appear to have made a profit.
Ning ("peace" in Chinese) has been well regarded partly because of its chairman, Marc Andreessen, who led the development of the Mosaic browser and co-founded Netscape to replace it (hence Mozilla, a Mosaic-killer). His co-founder and former CEO at Ning, Gina Bianchini, also made a name for herself.
In a video interview published at Vator.tv last month, Bianchini said the next-generation Ning would be launched this year, and that the company was hiring. She was also happy to talk about revenue streams. She said about 13% of the user base paid for some premium services, and Ning also made money from "virtual gifts". As an example, she mentioned "bloody chain saws" being sold on the Lost Zombies network.
But the day before that enthusiastic interview was published online, Andreessen announced that Bianchini had "decided to step down after five and a half years of hard and terrific work".
Ning had banked on its user base expanding virally, and in his announcement about Bianchini, Andreessen claimed that ""Ning today is one of the world's top social networking properties, with more than 2.3 million user-created Ning Networks and more than 45 million registered users, and is far and away the market leading social platform for interests and passions."
However, in Eyeballs still don't pay the bills, a blog post at 37Signals (the company behind Basecamp, Backpack, Campfire, Writeboard etc), David Hansson said: "Ning's problem is not a lack of eyeballs but its inability to turn them into cash money to pay the bills. Getting more of something that's a net-negative is not going to make up for it."
"The just-give-it-away-for-free-and-they-will-come-and-we'll-be-rich automatron is as broken now as it was in 2001."
On Andreessen's numbers, millions of users could now be faced with paying for Ning's service or abandoning the networks that have taken them so much time and effort to build.
This is a useful reminder that no free online service is guaranteed to remain free, or even to survive. Indeed, it's a fair bet that at least 90% will, in the long term, disappear. Those lured with the bait of cloud computing should bear this in mind and make sure they have complete backups of all their data, plus an exit strategy for when the worst happens.
Alternatives to Ning include SocialGo, elgg, and Igloo. Other suggestions are welcome, but most people will probably just use Facebook….
Monday, March 29, 2010
Missing in Action
I realize that I have not written very many blog entries in the past few months, and what I did write rarely had anything to do with my own life. This was at least partly due to the fact that I was overburdened with several unpleasant tasks, and when I did go on the computer, I seemed to feel much more like playing online games such as Vampires or Super Poke Pets than like writing blog entries about all the things that I didn't enjoy doing in the first place. This resulted in me being so absent from the net that at least one person wondered what had become of me.
I will now attempt to account for at least some of the past few months.
Immediately after moving to my present apartment, a lot of my time and energy was spent trying to settle in. However, suddenly it was Fall and then Winter, and I had a lot of other things to deal with.
For the past few years, my mother, who has just turned 99 years old, has had Alzheimer's disease. After my father passed away two years ago, responsibility for her care has rested on me and my brother. Since my mother was then residing at the Castel Royale in Cote St. Luc, more of the responsibility for her care was on me than on my brother who lives 400 miles away in Toronto.
One of the results of my living in the Province of Quebec is the incredible amount of bureaucracy that I have to deal with. This includes the act taking care of my mother. It is necessary to deal with the Office of the Public Curator. Here is a link to their website, to give you an idea of what is involved:
http://www.curateur.gouv.qc.ca/cura/en/majeur/index.html
Among other things, it is necessary for me to supply them with an annual report of how I am taking care of the finances of my mother. This report was just submitted to them at the beginning of March. Some of the work was done by an accountant, which made it a little bit easier for me. However, there is always the possibility that the Office of the Public Curator will decide to audit the report, and then I'll really get snowed under!
Now, for Part 2. The Castel Royale, where my mother was living, was designed as an apartment building for independent seniors who may need some assistance in performing some of the daily tasks of life. It was not designed for someone having Alzheimer's. It was necessary for my mother to have around-the-clock caregivers for her to be able to remain at the Castel Royale after my father had passed away. By July 2009, it was becoming evident that even this arrangement was not workable for much longer.
There are two facilities which are designed to care of people with Alzheimer's. One is the Maimonides in Cote St. Luc, Quebec. The other is the Baycrest in Toronto, Ontario. Because each of these facilities has a long waiting list, it was decided to put my mother on the waiting lists for both, and my brother and I agreed that she would be put into whichever of these two facilities had an opening first.
In early December 2009, my brother in Toronto received a phone call from Baycrest. A bed would be available there in two weeks, provided that my mother moved there as soon as the bed became available.
On December 29, 2009, my mother moved to Baycrest in Toronto. It was a complicated operation, involving an airline flight which landed at Toronto Island Airport.
This left the apartment at the Castel Royale to be dealt with. According to the law, the lease there could be broken, but it would be necessary to keep paying the rent there for the next three months. The three-month period would end on April 1, 2010.
So I kept going to that apartment about once a week in order to start taking papers, etc., out of there, and bringing them to my apartment. There were lots of papers to deal with, since my late father had not thrown out very much. But I was able to find a sufficient amount of stuff that could be safely dumped into the garbage.
Finally, most of the small things had been dealt with, and then the furniture could be dealt with.The report to the Public Curator had to be sent in first, and then a mover could be hired to move the furniture out.
On Monday, March 15, a moving van came to the Castel Royale apartment. The bulk of the furniture was transported to my present apartment, which has now changed from being almost empty to being somewhat cluttered. A few boxes of stuff were transported to Toronto to go to either my mother or my brother.
Finally, on Wednesday March 24, I went down to the Castel Royale and surrendered the keys to the Administration. Everything had been done. And that, Virginia, is why I have not written many blog entries of late.