| Thursday, December 5, 2002 |  |
| Prophet's Conference |
 I'm at the Prophet's Conference in Palm Springs for a couple of days. A great group of speakers, and old friends to meet. Sofar, a great talk by John Perry Barlow on "Tending the Garden of Mind". He is just fabulous at weaving things together. This is not really his typical crowd, so it also became a bit of an education for the audience. In short, there are strong forces out there who would like to own the content of your mind, so get educated enough to do something about it. Nobody can own ideas, and it is all the same mind stuff that flows through all of us anyway.
After that there was a panel, with John, and Barbara Marx Hubbard, Gregg Braden, Nicky Scully, and some young people representing the conscious dance culture. Very stimulating fusion of energy there. Talk of more merging of rhythm and art into these more cerebral ideas. Talk of how we're all Natives of the Now, the new indiginous people. [ Diary | 2002-12-05 19:55 | 3 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| New Political Compass |
 Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson were also giving separate speeches here at the Prophet's Conference. They're the authors of Cultural Creatives, and Paul invented the term based on his marketing research. Lately Paul has been talking and writing about a "new political compass", which comes out of a lot more surveys of many Americans. When I first read about it, I thought it was sort of boring, as it mainly is a conclusion that the left/right political spectrum doesn't cut it. But now I got the point much better. Most importantly, the study pinpoints specific characteristics of a group of people, which Paul puts as North on his political compass. He calls them New Progressives, says they're neither left nor right, but they're against big business and globalization, they're for the environment, for personal development. More willing to volunteer and take action than any other group, but nobody is noticing the group or speaking to them. In terms of politics and big media, that is. And the point is that if this group would recognize itself, it could be the most powerful force in U.S. politics. Or, rather, the breakthrough is not just that it might be a good thing, but Paul Ray shows that it IS the biggest force in U.S. politics, and it just doesn't know it yet. 45% of the people who vote.[ Politics | 2002-12-05 23:59 | 3 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| Whose card is it, anyway? |
| Just before I needed to leave for Palm Springs, as I was trying to pay my rent, and being surprised that my account seemed to be empty, I realized that somebody had cleared it out through fraudulent credit card charges. About $1500 yesterday, which happened to be what I needed for my rent. Apparently somebody had appropriated the information for my wife's bank card. And now that we're examining the statements closely, it turns out that they have been stealing little amounts over the past couple of months, to buy access to an assortment of porn sites. But then in the past two days they decided to order a $999 copy of Microsoft Visual Studio, some other software I haven't identified, and some domain names. Rather bizarre, as that Microsoft program was ordered in my wife's name to be delivered to our address. And somebody has gone to the trouble of setting up fake e-mail accounts in a number of different places, in order to confirm these purchases, using parts of our names, the latest being funch@usa.net. Oh, the bank cancelled all the charges right away, but this is still a big pain. And an invasion of your privacy is a rather unnerving thing. [ Diary | 2002-12-05 23:59 | 2 comments | PermaLink ] More > |