Tales from the Technoverse

Commentary on social networking, technology, movies, society, and random musings

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Gettysburg – Everyone Has A Backstory

October 9th, 2009 · history

This weekend my wife, Ellen, and I decided to spend the weekend at a B&B in Gettysburg, swinging through Antietam on the way home Sunday. She had never visited and I hadn’t been in a long time.

The area is really beautiful this time of year, the B&B is very nice (out of town so pretty quiet), we enjoyed walking around a bit late this afternoon and early evening and plan to be battlefield tourists the next two days.

One side note, the ice cream at Kirwin’s, which I am happy to report was started before I was born, an increasingly unlikely situation, and which evidently is a chain, was very good.

We noticed that in the sort-of-farm next door there were two chickens and a horse. It turns out that the two chickens belonged to the neighbor’s first wife and thus we learned the backstory here, in the outskirts of Gettysburg.

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NATOA Presentation

October 7th, 2009 · government 2.0, presentations

I recently attended the annual conference of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, http://natoa.org/events/annual-conference/2009/.  NATOA is a national trade association representing local governments. It includes both elected and appointed officials and staff who oversee communications and cable television franchising.

It was great interacting with the attendees and hearing the kinds of issues that local officials face, as well as spending a little bit of time in New Orleans, where the meeting was held. It was the first time I was in New Orleans.

The panel I served on discussed Government 3.0, what it might be, and some of the issues associated with it.

My major points were that the ‘classical’ description of 3.0 has been that the next step is to implement what is called the Semantic Web. The term is generally used to mean that the web will understand its own content and with that knowledge allow more robust searches and interactions. I call it the “Return what I want, not what I ask for” web. I expressed some skepticism about the likelihood of this happening.

I pointed out that there was much to do with the old-fashioned Government 2.0 approach, which still is very young. And I brought up my favorite topic, the integration of fast sensors into networks and its implications to local and state government.

My NATOA Government 3.0 Presentation

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SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE

September 20th, 2009 · General

Note: what follows was a document I prepared for my Syracuse University class, I would be interested in any feedback on its contents either in the comments section or sending me an email at dmintz@ourownlittlecorner.com. Thaanks.

 

One of the first discussion topics for our class dealt with an excerpt from one of our textbooks relating to where the security function should report within an organization. 

The excerpt said “In these cases, the information security manager generally reports directly or indirectly to the CIO but in some cases may report to the CFO or, unfortunately, even to Operations.”

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Sensor Technology

September 7th, 2009 · sensors

This Week

 Before I get to the topic of this blog entry, sensors, I wanted to mention that I have been privileged to play a small role in the Government 2.0 Expo, www.gov2expo.com, occurring Tuesday, September 8th, and the  Government 2.0 Summit, www.gov2summit.com, occurring Wednesday and Thursday, all at the DC Convention Center.

 The fact that so many people around the country are interested in experimenting with 2.0 technologies to improve the way Government interfaces to its external and internal stakeholders and in a fundamental fashion rethink how it should operate, is wonderful.

 Democracies only work well when there is vigorous debate and participation in the public square.  I encourage anyone who reads this blog, recently calculated in the ten’s of viewers, to access these web sites and get active in future such activities.

 Sensors

One of the ways to look at the development of Information Technology is the increased capabilities of fast computers, fast networks and fast sensors.

fast venn diagram a

 

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The Edict of Milan

September 5th, 2009 · bible, christian history, history

As those who know me know, I have become very interested in the archaeology of the Bible. By Bible, I mean the Hebrew Bible.

My personal opinion is that faith is just that, faith. To me, faith does not have to be ‘proven’ by the historicity of religious texts or disproven by the lack of same. My interest has pretty much nothing to do with my Jewish beliefs, but rather curiosity as to whether the historic record is consistent or inconsistent, or has any evidence at all, related to the Bible as history. There has been a lot of new information collected over the last twenty years and the ability to interpret the material already collected has increased enormously. Thus there is lots to read and think about.

Over time, my interests stray a bit from that original focus and have moved to early Christianity and on to the middle ages and Islam, covering what I call the three major Abrahamic religions. When I talk about, and I guess write about, these thoughts I do find myself more cautious when discussing Christianity or Islam, since as a Jew I sometimes feel how my thoughts will be taken, which I try to always disassociate with faith and belief, may be misinterpreted.

A discussion about the Edict of Milan after the jump …

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The Lives of Others (2006)

August 22nd, 2009 · movies

In December, 1975, I was one of a group of young political and civic leaders on a State Department sponsored visit to Europe. One of the places we visited was pre-unification Berlin.

The initial visit to East Berlin was sobering. On the West Berlin side, the Christmas season lead to brightly colored decorations, shoppers, and a great deal of activity both day and night. I remember that when we were in East Berlin one evening, it was almost as if we were in The Wizard of Oz, going back to Kansas, from color to black and white film.

There were literally no bright lights at all in East Berlin. Well, except for, of all things, a Diners Club sign in a bar that was near the wall on the East side. This blue blinking sign stood out in the grays and whites of everything else.

A discussion of the Berlin wall and the movie after the jump … [Read more →]

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So How Do You Start The Darn Thing

August 12th, 2009 · government business, travel

After staying in a hotel in Sacramento where the air conditioning broke and where there were no other rooms free, I flew down to Los Angeles this morning for the second of my two stops in California.

The plane flight was uneventful, I was able to get tomorrow’s boarding pass before leaving the airport, and then went outside to catch the rental car shuttle.

After waiting for what seemed a VERY long time for the shuttle for my unnamed rental car company to come, whose name rhymed with Mudget, I arrived to get my rental car. The guy at the counter told me it was in C-8 around the building to the back, the list location near the road. [Read more →]

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I’m Still Big, It’s the Pictures That Got Small

August 5th, 2009 · Entertainment

So says Norma Desmond, the iconic former silent movie star who is the focus of Sunset Boulevard.

Considered by many to be the iconic film noir about the vacuity of Hollywood, it is well worth seeing. Norma Desmond was played by Gloria Swanson, who herself had been a star in silent films and didn’t make the transition to ‘talkies’, her young lover was played by William Holden. Neither was the first choice for their respective parts but they each played them well.

Characters in the film include Cecil B DeMille, Buster Keaton, and Hedda Hopper all playing themselves. Desmond’s driver and 1st husband, Max, was played by Gloria Swanson’s real-life silent film director, Erich von Stroheim. The movie was directed by Billy Wilder and was rated in the top 20 films in history by AFI. [Read more →]

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Evidently Someone Finds Me Fascinating

August 3rd, 2009 · government business

In the July 28th edition of govfresh, Goldy Kamali wrote a column entitled the Top 25 Most Fascinating Communicators in Government IT.

 

Goldy evidently needs to get out more since she was kind enough to include me on the list.

http://govfresh.com/2009/07/top-25-most-fascinating-communicators-in-government-it/

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A Solar Eclipse Is Much More Than Just A Visual Experience

July 23rd, 2009 · 2009 china solar eclipse, travel

“First Contact!” 

 

The shout came from the group of professional astronomers and experienced amateurs who were collected at the edge of the plaza at the local Wuhan University which our group had reserved to watch the eclipse. 

 

Excitement increased among the crowd of ninety Eclipse Chasers who had traveled from all over the United States, Venezuela, Columbia, England, and Canada. The noise level from the nearly 1000 local citizens mostly standing on the edge or the plaza rose also though it was obvious they were less clear on what was happening. 

 

First Contact refers to the first moment that the edge of the moon touches the disk of the Sun. From that point on begins what is both the longest and shortest periods of time that any of the observers will experience. First Contact in Wuhan was called out at around 8:15 am, three hours after our bus left the hotel and five hours after the first of the three buses had left the hotel; that first bus carrying those people with telescopes and specialized photographic equipment. 

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