I overslept and thus came in at the end of the panel at DLD on women in the industry. The room was packed. A man in the audience (was it Ben Hammersley??) followed up on a panelist’s claim that an EU requirement that 30%of some government body (sorry to be vague; I couldn’t hear so well) made a real difference. The man asked for some examples of the difference this had made in policies.

In the course of her answer, the woman in her perfect English said that she didn’t think women were more peaceful than men. Germany has female fighter pilots, she said, and “Condoleeza Rice was a woman.” Even before she realized her mistake and corrected herself, the audience tittered.

Not a big deal. But I’m curious about why the crowd found this funny, or why it made the crowd anxious. Had the panelist made some other small mistake in English — “Rice are a woman,” “Rice a woman is” — no one would have laughed. It would have been rude to. It was the content of her mistake that caused the laugh, as if the very possibility of changing gender makes us nervous. Or possibly it was because we think power could turn a woman into a man. I don’t know.

Or maybe I’m just a little cranky from a late night, a fantastic dinner, and just a little more wine than I should have had.

[Tags: women’s_rights gender dld dld09 ]

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Video games have gotten one rev away from awesome. While the graphics on PC games are not yet truly photo-realistic, they are good enough that, in the hands of superb graphic artists, they are not only immersive, they are stylistically interesting. Bioshock is a terrific example of this. Far Cry 2 is realistic enough that you want to pull over and watch the scenery now and then. The new Call of Duty is visually good enough that killing Nazi and Japanese soldiers was too gruesome. The human figure, facial expressions, and even dirt and dust are getting very close to being good enough for drama.

So, here’s the movie I’d like to see using these tools. It’s a drama, possibly a mystery. Multiple narrative threads and interdependencies. All set within a single city, or in sites that I can teleport between (unless travel becomes more rewarding than it is in most games). I want the characters to enact the plot. And I want to be free to wander around the city, eavesdropping. I want to be a ghost, a disembodied eye and set of ears, a camera, moving around the room where characters are now interacting, choosing where to look and who to listen to. The first time through, I’m not going to be in the right spots at the right time. Eventually, though — and perhaps with some guidance from the plot or extrinsically (“Go here now!” arrows) if necessary — I will see and hear everything, and I will understand what happened.

I don’t want to interact. I don’t want to choose my own ending or help characters find the key or move the crate. I want to watch a movie, but be completely free to move through its settings as I want. And, perhaps the software will let me record the movie as I’ve seen it, and share my path with others.

I wouldn’t know how to write a movie like this. Maybe it can’t be done in a way that makes for a satisfactory experience. But I’m curious. I’d like to see one. [Tags: movies video_games theater art narrative ]

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#1

3 joys: 1. We elected a black man. 2. We love that we did. 3. That man is Barack Obama.

#2

Exec summary of speech: The oldest values beat the old politics. We move ahead together.

[Tags: obama inauguration politics #inaug09 ]

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Within minutes, the new WhiteHouse.gov went up. (Here’s the before and after.) The first blog post (yes, blog post) promises communication, transparency and participation. At the moment, though, there’s no way to participate, including no comments on the blog. I do admit that it’s not obvious how best to enable conversation on this site. (There’s a page that promises more participation.)

All the original content is copyright free, of course. Third-party content is posted under a CreativeCommons license.

[Tags: white_house obama president_obama e-gov e-government e-democracy ]

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I seem to be tweeting away in my eagerness to see the last of Bush and the first of the rest of us. Not to mention That One.

I tweet as dweinberger. Also, you can search for the tag #inaug09 to find a whole bunch o tweeters.

[Tags: inauguration obama president_obama twitter tweets #inaug09 ]

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Yesterday I had to explain to my startled children why their dad just about jumped out of his seat with joy when Pete Seeger showed up on stage. To those not of a particular generation and of a particular swipe through that generation, it is indeed a mystery…

I was born in 1950 to parents who agreed more about politics than anything else. My father was a WWII vet and a graduate of Harvard Law who, rather than going into private practice, went to work as a lawyer for the New York State Labor Relations Board. He believed working people needed the power of unions to fight exploitation. And he was right.

My mother was a folksinger — she taught guitar but did not have enough confidence, or I imagine, my father’s support, to perform — starting in the early 1950s, before the the pop acculturation of that form. Folk music back then was a mix of art, anthropology and politics. During an era of smooth, mass market, commercial singers — think of a Perry Como Christmas Hour — the folklorists were out in the fields, preserving the raw, bottom-up songs of the least among us. Folk music stood in the fields against the great lawn mower of commercial entertainment.

A labor lawyer and a folksinger. My parents were the very definition of what others called “commie symps” (communist sympathizers). Pink, not red. They had no love for Russia, but they also saw America’s sins for what they were: Racist, misogynist (my mother but not my father was something like an early feminist), crass, bullying, and sexually obsessed with atomic bombs. They believed in America’s stated principles and promise, and had the ACLU membership cards to prove it. But they had also lived through a time when lynchings went unpunished, and Joseph McCarthy had twisted the legislature around his accusatory finger.

Pete Seeger was of my parents’ generation. In our household, he was the example of what a patriot looks like. A man of the people. Someone who had suffered for his political views in the McCarthy years. A hero who had stayed true to his ideals. A person who felt connected to the worst off, who appreciated their culture and who worked for their aspirations. A quiet person who never boasted. A character who never bowed to fashion or the expectations of others. A singer happiest in a small circle of like souls. Someone whose life and songs celebrated the greatest of America’s democratic ideals: The ineffable value of the ordinary person.

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So, when Pete Seeger came out on stage in his rainbow Smurf hat, to sing before our new president, our new black president, I lost it. What my parents would have thought. What Pete Seeger must be thinking. But most of all, the proof of how steeply history can arc.

Pete Seeger: American patriot.

[Note: This post is also up at Huffington. Feel free to comment there.]

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND
words and music by Woody Guthrie

[Note the second-to-last verse, the one that begins “As I was walkin’ – I saw a sign there.” It’s a lot of people’s favorite — dw]

Chorus:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

I’ve roamed and rambled and I’ve followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding

This land was made for you and me

Chorus

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

As I was walkin’ – I saw a sign there
And that sign said – no tress passin’
But on the other side …. it didn’t say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city – In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office – I see my people
And some are grumblin’ and some are wonderin’
If this land’s still made for you and me.

[Tags: obama pete_seeger inauguration inaug09 barack_obama patriotism folksongs ]

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Obama’s letter to his daughters in Parade Magazine this morning wasn’t particularly well done. But I choked up. I’m watching Bruce Springsteen at the concert right now. I’ve never particularly liked him, and I’m not knocked out by this. But I’m on the verge of tears again. Jon goddamn Bonjovi just made me cry.

I’m in a bad way.

I don’t need any reminders about the troubles we face or Obama’s flaws and weaknesses. I know he’s just a guy with two legs and an empty pair of pants when he wakes up. Really I do.

But for months I’ve felt, well, a surge. I can’t even tell you what the feeling is. All I know for sure is that it makes my throat tight and my cheeks wet. And it’s too much to be attributed to one skinny young guy. And certainly it’s not all directed at him.

But don’t you feel it too? It’s as if we’ve been given permission, let go, released. Let’s not say from what. Not today.

Into what? Not sure. But it’s been there all along, waiting.

At least, that’s what it feels like to me.

[Tags: obama inauguration hope ]

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Suw Charman-Anderson has started a pledge at PledgeBank that asks 1,000 people to agree to blog about a woman in technology on the birthday of Ada Lovelace, March 24. [Later: Oops. That’s not her birthday. March 24 is just a day Suw chose at random because Lovelace’s birthday is too far away to wait.] [Tags: ada_lovelace women_in_technology ]

[Note: I’ve closed the comments on this post because it’s become a spam magnet. – May 13, 2009]

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With only a few regrets, I voted in favor of the Massachusetts ballot initiative that decriminalized possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. That law went into effect yesterday.

I voted in favor of it for the standard reasons. And my reservations are also pretty much standard issue. But here’s my personal reservation.

It’s not because pot led to more serious drugs. I had friends for whom it was a gateway drug, although I’m not at all sure they wouldn’t have rushed through the gate, or hurdled it, or knocked it down, or routed around it, even if pot never existed. In any case, it didn’t lead to much else for me, beyond experimenting with the usual this and the scarier that.

No, my regret is that I wasted so much time. I smoked pot on a lot of my youth’s evenings because I was bored. But it’s not as if the world isn’t interesting enough. Being bored is your own fault.

For me, pot was artificial laziness. I regret the time I squandered.

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Like every New Yorker reader, I am perpetually behind. But I’ve been greatly enjoying reading issues from before the election. Knowing how it turns out relieves all the stress.

It also deepens the joy. Thomas Mallon has a terrific article (book review, actually) in the Oct. 13 issue, about how our view of Lincoln has changed over the years. For example, when the Lincoln Memorial was first opened, in 1922, Lincoln was celebrated as the Great Unifier, not the Great Emancipator. Here’s how the article concludes:

In 1909, the Reverend L. H. Magee, the pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Springfield, Illinois, voiced his disgust at the exclusion of blacks from the town’s centennial dinner, but he imagined that by the time of the bicentennial, in 2009, racial prejudice would be “relegated to the dark days of ‘Salem witchcraft.’ ” Next year’s Lincoln commemorations in Washington will include the reopening of Ford’s Theatre, restored for performances for the second time since 1893, when its interior collapsed, killing twenty-two people. Congress will convene in a joint session on February 12th, and on May 30th the still new President will rededicate the Lincoln Memorial. The look and the emphasis of the occasion will have changed—measurably, for certain; astoundingly, perhaps—in the fourscore and seven years since 1922.

[Tags: lincoln slavery racism obama hope good_writing ]

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