OneMind

This article on the American Institute of Vedic Studies Web site raises some thought-provoking questions and points to some potential spiritual-psychological answers as it discusses IT in the context of the current global economic and climatological dilemmas.

The author, Dr. David Frawley, is an eminent authority on Hindu thought and spirituality who has a clear-eyed grasp of the state of the world today as he surveys the limits of information technology, limits he says are being realized in the midst of these global conditions. Among other things, he suggests that perhaps young Indian entrepreneurs hold the key to reconciling the seeming exhaustion of the capabilities of linear-realized IT and the inner wisdom of centuries-old spiritual technology. “India’s new set of young entrepreneurs – who still have the cultural and family heritage of Yoga and Vedanta – can help in such a dharmic reorientation of our present civilization. Let us hope that they awaken to this task because if they do not, it is difficult to see where the alternative may come from,” he writes.

I find it immensely intriguing and suddenly more important than ever before to recognize the huge percentage of computer professionals of Indian background who are working in this country and, perhaps even more significantly, being trained here and returning to their native India where they can blend their cultural and philosophical heritage with the mind-and-material bent of Western philosophy in ways that may boggle the mind in the decades immediately ahead.

I had a very pleasant breakfast this morning with an old Silicon Valley colleague, Scott Love of AquaMinds. Scott and I have worked together for a few years but never met face to face, which is pretty astonishing in its own right. Particularly when you consider that his brainchild, NoteShare (and its older brother NoteTaker) is one of two programs that I use every single day.

(For the record the other is my Web browser.)

We talked almost as much about our other common interest — baseball in general and the San Francisco Giants in particular — as we did about NoteShare and where it’s headed. But I really enjoyed the tech talk more because down here on the Monterey Peninsula there isn’t nearly as thriving and large a tech community as I grew used to in 25 years in the Valley of the Chip.

Scott and I got to talking about business opportunities that might be uncovered by NoteShare as a platform and we came up with a couple of cool ideas. I’m going to spend some time thinking about and planning one of them even though I’ll probably never have time to execute.

If you don’t know about NoteShare, I suggest you check it out. You can download a 30-day demo. It’s a combination notebook, omnivorous content holder, and scriptable, extensible application platform. It may be the most versatile piece of software I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of it in my three decades in this business. Even if you can’t come up with a burning need for it, you might just think it’s too cool to pass up.

Oh, one thing, though. For now NoteShare runs only on Macintosh. But not forever. I’m just sayin’.

President Obama continues to find a way almost every week to disappoint me and the rest of the left wing of the Democratic Party. His decision last week to flip-flop on the planned release of hundreds of new photos showing evidence of more widespread torture of captives than previously anticipated is the latest example.

In announcing that he would oppose their release despite his earlier promise not to do so, Obama said that they were “not particularly sensational” and then argued that they would somehow put Americans more in harm’s way. Really? Really, Mr. President? You don’t see the logical contradiction in those two statements? It seems to me that he is motivated by one of two forces. Either he is worried that America will be further embarrassed by them (an excuse he explicitly disavowed during the campaign) or he’s bowing to pressure from the intelligence community and Leon Panetta. Either way, he is acting without integrity.

George Washington Law Professor Jonathan Turley is vociferous in his anger. On the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC Wednesday, he said the decision constituted an “incredibly dark moment for civil libertarians,” then turned his scathing commentary to Obama himself. “…[T]his administration is becoming the greatest bait-and-switch in history.” He accused Obama of “morphing into his predecessor.” While I don’t agree with that statement if broadly applied, it certainly seems to be accurate with respect to this subject.

Political Activist “The Pen” nails it. “What’s really going on here is that Obama has so far resisted in every possible way his duty under the law to appoint a special prosecutor, despite his affirmation that waterboarding is torture, and the arrogant public confessions of those who ordered that torture. Having underestimated the furor for prosecution that the previous release of the torture memos would cause at home, Obama now well knows that these pictures would just increase that pressure.”

I am sure he knows it, but under International law Obama is guilty of complicity in war crimes if he knows or has reason to believe war crimes have been committed and fails to investigate such evidence. This is not a political matter; it is a moral and legal one. It is clear what the right thing is; Obama just needs to do it.

Sign The Pen’s Petition demanding that Obama appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush Regime and its high-ranking members for war crimes and to carry out criminal prosecutions if and as warranted.

Tonight Rachel Maddow played a very brief clip of an interview by Arab TV network Aljazeera with former Bush Administration official Richard Armitage. In it Armitage said he probably should have resigned when it came to light that he and his bosses were engaged in activity that violated the Geneva Convention. At the end of the clip, she warned her viewers not to expect to see Aljazeera on their local cable outlets because the network is all but banned from American cable. She suggested that the entire interview was really interesting.

Yeah but if you really want to see what Aljazeera is saying and offering you can always go to the Net. Why she didn’t point out that the entire clip of the Armitage interview is available on the Web. Interestingly, the rest of the interview puts Armitage far more closely in the Obama “let’s not do this again but not punish the perpetrators” position on this whole subject. He also denied he knew of any torture but he did acknowledge that he and his boss, then Secretary of State Colin Powell, lost more than one battle over the issue of whether the U.S. had to abide by the Geneva Convention when it came to treatment of so-called “enemy combatants.”

Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC show tonight took President Obama to task for submitting a budget request in the form of a “Supplemental,” a technique brought to imperfection as a way to avoid anyone getting a real handle on the cost of the Iraq War by the Bush Regime.

During his campaign and since his election, Obama has criticized that technique of his predecessor and promised he would not resort to this tactic. So his announcement today that he would submit such a supplemental request for funding for the Iraq War got her attention. She and Paul Rykoff, head of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Against the War commiserated over this breach of trust.

But they didn’t pay close attention to the reality. The reason Obama said he had to do this is because, since this is the way all of the war’s previous funding was handled, and since he’s rolled that funding into his formal budget, and since that budget doesn’t kick in on time, he had to ask for a bridge fund to keep things going until his new budget took effect.

I think I’ve demonstrated already that I’m not a Pollyanna when it comes to Obama. I’ve taken him to task on numerous occasions; I expect I will many more times in the future. But this one isn’t legit. He did the only thing he could do given the weird mechanics of the budgeting process during a time of transition.

So back off, Rachel. Accusing the President of a breach of faith is entirely appropriate when he makes a decision where he had an option to do what he promised. But in a case like this, you have to cut him some slack.

Open letter to Keith Olbermann of MSNBC “Countdown”:

My wife says your show is becoming trite compared to your newly arrived follow-up hostess, Rachel Maddow. She’s right.

Some advice:

First, stop using the same guys as “Worst Person in the World” candidates night after night. It’s boring.

Second, stop publicizing “Comedian Rush Limbaugh” and Bill O’Reilly. We know you guys hate each other’s guts. We just don’t care. We don’t listen to those guys. We listen to you. Stop telling us about them. It’s like “Inside Baseball” stuff and it’s not interesting.

Third, stop using comedians on your show in place of serious commentary. You overdo that bit. Once in a while is fine, especially if it’s George Carlin or someone of his talent. But week in and week out guys from VH1? Gimme a break.

We’re getting to the point where if we can only watch one of our evening political newscasts, it’s increasingly Rachel.

Keith Olbermann sometimes — too often, in fact — picks on petty misstatements and missteps by conservatives as a way of branding the Right as stupid and ignorant. Tonight he singled out former Sen. Rick Santorum characterizing the Koran as being written in “Islamic.” Keith pointed out that the language is called Arabic, not Islamic, which is an adjective that describes the people or the theology of Muslims.

I was just commenting on that to my wife when Rachel Maddow came on and blew it way, way out of proportion. She had a guest — one of my favorites — Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy of the Interfaith Alliance go on and on about it besides her own petty attack.

Both of them have to learn to pick on the Right for real things it does and says wrong. There’s no shortage of same. On any given evening, both Keith and Rachel trip over words, make obviously wrong statements and otherwise make themselves look less educated and informed than they clearly are.

Can we get serious?

Oh, and while we’re at it, Rachel. Please stop quoting stories from the Washington Times as the basis for an attack on the Right. The Times is a useless, bigoted right-wing rag for which no respectable journalist would go to work on a bet. Owned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the paper has one agenda: promote the ultra-conservative cause by any means at all, the truth (which they wouldn’t recognize anyway) be damned.

I really like MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show. It is threatening to move into first place ahead of her colleague Keith Olbermann. But tonight, she blew it. And regular guest Ana Marie Cox called her on it.

See, President Obama’s hosting a Super Bowl XLIII watch party at the White House. He invited the two senators from Pennsylvania and the two senators from Arizona. The former both said yes; the latter both declined. One of the latter is, of course, the old man Obama humbled last November, Sen. John McCain.

Rachel said that she viewed McCain’s declining the invite to be a snub of some proportion. Ms. Cox disagreed and so do I. McCain, Ms. Cox reported, is a serious football fan who figured if he went to the White House for the game, the small talk and other distractions (one of the Pennsylvania senators is bringing his four daughters to the party and having raised four girls, I know the odds of seeing the entire game with them present are pretty low) would make it highly unlikely he’d get to see the entire game, let alone see it his way.

I’m not particularly drawn to this Super Bowl. I have no vested interest in who wins, though I expect the Steelers to crush the Cardinals and for the game to be a laugher by halftime (go ahead, Kurt, prove me wrong!), but it’s the freaking Super Bowl. So of course I’m watching it. With a couple of friends.

If I were invited to the White House to see the game — and assuming it wouldn’t be the only chance I’d have to meet the President and be in his house — I suspect I’d turn it down as well.

Hand me the damn remote, get out of the way and shut up.

Please?

Tonight I’m starting two new categories to hold open letters from me to Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, both of MSNBC. I watch both of their shows most nights and I’ve often wanted to sound off to them but I’m sure they don’t read their own email so I’m trying this approach.

Rachel,

Right on. Your take on what the Democratic Senatorial Caucus ought to do with Joe Liebermann is right on. He cannot be trusted. I don’t care that his voting record is 90% Democratic on key domestic issues. I don’t care that he could give the Democrats a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority; the two Republican ladies from Maine will do that more often than not and when they don’t, maybe we don’t deserve it. They are reasonable people who are neither demagogic nor particularly known for hewing to the Republican line.

What I do care about — and, Rachel, you made this point emphatically and well tonight — is that Liebermann, if left to his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (and how the hell did those two things end up under one committee to begin with?), will turn the considerable investigative power of that office on fellow Democrats for any number of indefensible reasons.

The guy has to go. He promised to abide by the Democratic primary and then when he lost it, he turned renegade on the party. Then to make his point (I’m not a Democrat you can control or count on), he not only backed and campaigned with and for the GOP ticket, he attacked the Democratic standard-bearer. How many more times does this guy have to poke you Democratic Senators in the eye before you cut him loose?

You go, Rachel!