Touch-Sensitive Screens on Notebook Computers

After watching the ads for the new iPhone while plinking away with a stylus on my Palm E2, I sit in front of my notebook computer and wonder: Why isn't the screen in front of me touch sensitive? It seems asinine that I have to move my hand, which is already close to the screen, away from it towards the embedded mouse or the external mouse in order to manipulate the information in front of me.

Does this technology already exist? I mean, I know touch sensitive screens, and now screens with software allowing for two simultaneous contacts, already exist for PDAs and phones. But have these technologies already been applied to notebook computers? I'm sure someone smarter than I am has already thought of putting the two together. If anyone out there knows of a brand that is available which employs this combination, let me know.

If the technology doesn't exist (in this configuration), I want credit for positing the idea. I'm no engineer, and no patent expert, but I'll give the idea away for some paltry sum... say, $100,000. Oh, and I want a working copy of a production model before it hits the shelves. That's all I ask. Now, someone make one, gimme, and pay up.

Oh, and since laptops can be fitted with cameras (many already have them internally) and a couple of manufacturers are already working with tabletop computers that identify the motions of hands using two cameras and parallax, why not do that on a laptop, so the person doesn't even have to touch the screen, just lift their hands off of the keyboard and manipulate the information by waving their hands like those cool ads with Jay Z? If no one is already working on this, I'm selling this idea for a cool $200,000. And a working model, of course.

Imagine coffee shops filled with people like me, people who like to type with more than their thumbs, reading their New York Times and flipping the virtual pages of the morning's paper by waving their hands in front of their laptop screens. "Star Trek" will have nothing on us!

It's a brave new world, and I'm looking forward to these inevitable, people-friendly technologies. Steve Jobs, get on it. Bill Gates, I know Microsoft doesn't do much in the way of hardware, but this will require new software. Imagine Vista without a mouse interface. Cool, eh? Get to work. And, in case I'm actually the first to voice these ideas, I want my cut. If I'm not first, will someone tell me where I can get this kind of stuff?

P.S.
I sent copies of this post to email addresses I found for Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. I'll let folks know when I get a reply. Start holding your breath... now!

A thought in church

Sometimes I write in church. I used to feel bad about this, but a friend, Bethany Lee, who is also a worship leader, once explained some things to me about the true nature of worship, and now I feel a lot more free to write if I feel called to do it, no matter where I am. Anyway, here's a little note I jotted down last Sunday, something of an unpolished thought:

"I think about this new wave of intellectualizing against faith of all kinds, and I cannot help but notice that these men: Dawkins, Hitchens, Onfray, seem to me to have an immature, underdeveloped knowledge of their own ignorance. They are reluctant to acknowledge that which they don't know but take on faith. This, in itself, is not an argument for faith. That would be a God-of-the-gaps argument, for one thing, and frankly, I'm coming to believe that apologists for Christianity are not "The second Judas", as Kierkegaard called them, but merely an embarrassment to themselves and other Christians; Not the second Judas, but the second Kirk Cameron. Still, these anti-apologists strike me as lazy philosophers. They are quite aware of the irrationalism of their religious neighbors, but they do not know themselves with any particular clarity or insightfulness. One of my old professors, a man who firmly believed in Intelligent Design (remember what I said about apologists and embarrassment?) who felt that if Christianity gave up its scientific claims it would be giving the ceding the entire playing field to atheism. I believe, increasingly, that the battle lines have been falsely drawn between scientific rationalism and ignorant, anti-intellectual irrationalism. To a large degree, men like my professor created this false dichotomy in their attempt to employ science to promote faith: instead of promoting faith, the made a mockery of it while promoting a reliance on science as authority. By promoting bad science, they reaffirmed the supremacy of the scientific ideal while undermining their own religious beliefs.

When the false debate of science vs. no science ends, and science wins resoundingly in the hearts and minds of people dependent on their microwaves and cell phones, I hope we will move on to a healthier recognition of the limits of science and the relationship between intellect and faith. I believe there must be Christians out there who are also eager to reject anti-intellectualism and earnestly explore the nature of an intellectual faith in God. Maybe I'm naive to think there are many folks out there who are still interested in this, and I admit I see dwindling empirical evidence of this kind of community of believers, but I'm a person of faith, so I go on hoping."

Thoughts?

Review of Spider-Man 3

When I was in high school I had a lingering suspicion that my teachers were not all capable of performing the tasks they assigned to us. This last week I assigned a critique of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, and tonight I went to see Spider-Man 3. I think this is a perfect opportunity to reach out to any kids who are as snotty and skeptical as I was and put their minds at ease. It will be difficult for me to stick to the strict 400 word limit I gave them for the body of the text, but here goes:

Spider-Man 3: A Fun Pop Song With a Few Off-Notes

Sam Raimi’s newest installment in the Spider-Man franchise is being beaten up (super-villain style) by most critics. By and large, they are missing the point. The general critique relates to the gimmick of the alien symbiote that changes Spider-Man’s costume black and makes him evil. Is this conceit cartoon-ish? Certainly. But that’s because it comes directly out of the comic book. That’s not to say the film is without flaws, but the most glaring mistakes related to choices that deviated from the comic book series, not the choices that were faithful.

The CGI action sequences were fun, and the scene where the Sandman gains his super-powers is nothing short of movie-making magic. Hayden Church and Topher Grace do all that can be expected with the parts they are given, and they aren’t alone. The leads play comic book roles with comic book overacting, which doesn’t seem out of place. They don’t have a lot of choice, since close-ups on their faces force them to telegraph every emotion. Like the acting, the dialogue is ham-handed and the story is clunky. Again, this felt faithful to the comic book genre, and any attempt to make the movie more literary would have been wasted on a movie about a man with super-powers delivered by a radio-active spider.

The biggest pitfalls came where screenwriters San and Ivan Raimi deviated from the comic book. William Shakespeare wisely avoided putting Rosaline on the stage with Juliet, because, beauty being subjective, half the audience might have felt Romeo picked the uglier girl. The Raimis falls into this trap in Spider Man 3. In the comic book, Gwen Stacy is Peter Parker’s first girlfriend, a looker, but no Mary Jane Watson in her heyday. She is caught up in the story of the Green Goblin and dead before Venom ever appears on the scene. Having missed the Gwen Stacy death storyline in his original movies, the Raimis opt to use her as an object of Peter Parker’s wandering eye and a motive for Eddie Brock, the future Venom, to envy Peter. The problem is that Bryce Dallas Howard, who plays Stacy, is simply more stunning than Kirtsen Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson. According to the comic Mary Jane becomes a supermodel eventually, and though Dunst is a looker, Raimi was smart to give that occupation to Howard. This might not have been a problem if Gwen Stacy were a shrew, but the character is also likable, while Mary Jane, in this installment, is insecure and needy. When Parker uses Stacy as a means to make MJ jealous, he not only comes off as a jerk, but as a fool.

The song and dance sequences (you read that right) are silly, but not in a comic book way, so they didn’t fit. I applaud Raimi’s creative bravery, but for the reported $270 million the movie cost, someone could have told him that comic book silliness and movie musical silliness are to different, incompatible animals.

Ultimately, the inflated climax and the preachy voice-over felt like they could have been lifted out of a comic book, too. No single issue of any comic book should be the reader’s favorite novel, and this movie won’t be anyone’s favorite, either. But I’d come back for the next issue.

Word Count: 551

* * *

So maybe I was right as a high school student. This teacher can’t pull off what he assigns. Students, feel free to lower my grade.

Socially Unacceptable Moviegoer Behavior

Some Central students behind me were doing their best to reach new heights of obnoxiousness. I don't mind the occassional carefully chosen obscenity (I've been known to drop the occasional F bomb myself) but the string of filth coming out of these kids mouths not only made them sound trashy, but it was generally incoherent and sometimes meant things I know they didn't intend. When a guy shouts "Show me your tits!" across a crowded theater and you're actually relieved that he's cleaned up his language, that says something not just about his vocabulary choice, but also about his quality as a person. I decided I would not hesitate to have them tossed out.

Ultimately, that didn't turn out to be necessary. About ten minutes into the film I turned around and forcefully told them to shut up. I waited about thirty seconds, and when they started again I turned around, looked right at the most obnoxious kid, and said, "You are not funny. Shut up."

And he did.

They tried to make a few more comments near the end of the movie, but they were about as quiet as the woman who thanked me and then later, oblivious to her hypocrisy, started making comments to her boyfriend.

I am of the opinion that if people are not mature enough to be quiet in movie theaters, or are interested in impressing their friends with their color commentary, they should wait for a movie to come out on video so they can humiliate themselves in the privacy of their own homes. But perhaps we have reached a tipping point where decent people who are actually interested in movies are the ones relegated to watching films at home. If that's the case, it's just another sad footnote in the general decline of Western Civilization, and I shouldn't be surprised. Thank goodness for Netflix! I am willing to forgo the movie theater experience, but I like movies too much to let them go. So, let the yahoos foot the bill for these blockbusters they attend but don't want to hear, just so long as a few good movies are still made for me to rent.

New York Trip, upon our safe return

A week after we've come home, I've finally posted the info from our last day and a brief (believe it or not) retrospective on the trip as a whole. What a kick! I have heard the term Anglophile used to describe those who are infatuated with all things British. Would I be the first to coin the term New York-ophile? Probably not. I've asked Zach, Lauren, and Zach, my friends in the city, to send me only the most pleasant stories about their lives there, so that we can pressure Paige to agree to move there, but, as my friend and colleague Bill Gsell said, "Ain't gonna' happen." (Then I said that maybe she could be convinced if Noah went to college at Columbia or Fordham or NYU, and he marveled at what a terrible idea that was, noting that the absolute last thing Noah would want would be his geeky dad following him off to college. I'm pretty sure Bill thinks Noah is the unluckiest kid in the world, doomed to be warped into nerd-hood by his father. I assure you all, Noah is very happy, as you can see here:

For some reason, Paige hates that I posted that picture on the New York Blog. She'd prefer something like this, perhaps?

Or this one?


Anyway, it's good to be back.

Oh, and one of the student-teachers at school noticed and correctly identified my new shoes as Starburys. This is probably as close as I will ever come to cool!

New York Trip

I'm trying to keep a daily blog so parents and friends of our school's choir tour to New York City can keep up. Here's the site. Wish me luck. Posting pictures ended up being harder than expected.

http://chsnytrip.blogspot.com/

Hopefully I'll be seeing Zach and Lauren as well as a friend I haven't seen in 12 years, Zach Dye, this Friday. Maybe I'll blog about that here. Wish me luck (and rest).


(I call it "Nerd Leaning on Mailbox")

An argument for socialized medicine

It would be both unethical and illegal for me to republish Timothy Noah's piece "Would You Privatize Defense: The case for socialized medicine, part I" here in this blog. I know this. But I'm still tempted.

Please read it, so I don't have to break the law.

I think this piece is important. It's an argument that appeals to reason rather than hyperbole. It also appeals to those who are more likely to be critical of socialized medicine, conservatives of the libertarian strain, because those same people thoroughly believe that national defense is a government obligation (in the most extreme cases, government's only obligation).

Here's why I think this piece really stands out: I can't fault the logic. Just when Noah seems like he's gone off the deep end, taking it all too far, I realize he's remained entirely consistent in his metaphor. Our national health system really is that ridiculous. Then, when it seems that this would be an opportunity for an easy partisan twist noting that Democrats are closer to recognizing this reality than Repblicans, Noah refrains. He stays true to the logic that has made the article both frightening and persuasive: It doesn't matter whose solution is slightly closer to nationalized health care, because anything less than full national health care means the candidate or party still hasn't recongized the underlying truth that protecting lives is a job for governments, not markets. Or worse, it means they know this to be true, but don't have the courage to take on the powerful forces that benefit from the lie of superior free market health care.

Maybe I'm buying the metaphor to eagerly. Maybe I'm missing something. Please, can someone explain how this logic doesn't follow? Show me how these are apples and oranges, and private health care is better than public, as opposed to private defense. Or show me that he's wrong on both fronts: that a war fought by more and more private contractors (like our current wars) are more likely to succeed than wars past, with a government led military. Good luck with that one. But seriously, show me how he's wrong.

Or, if he's not, let's work to spread this idea so that candidates with less courage (or more pragmatism, which might be the same thing) will follow in Dennis Kucinich's footsteps because it will become politically expedient.

Can we move on this quickly, please, because in less than three years I have to sit down and negotiate another contract where medical benefits are going to be the biggest issue because of our stupid system. So, someone show me how our stupid system really is the way to go, and I should be glad to be debating with management about who should eats its exponential cost increases. Or, failing that, let's do something to fix this health care cluster-f--- now.

On Re-reading 1984

Reading 1984 for a second time has been a very powerful experience. When I read it in high school it was a fun intellectual exercise. I was able to intellectualize the emotional power of the book, to separate myself from the story and examine the ideas from a safe distance. I have not enjoyed that luxury this time. It has been terrifying.

When I finished it for the second time, my first thought was that I had done something awful to my students. I pictured them coming back into my class, pale and wide-eyed, overcome by a new perspective on the world that soiled their innocence in some irreversible way. I had, by assigning this book, loosed the shackles and freed them from the cave, but they had not left to see the bright sun. Instead, they’d seen the evil of the chains for the first time, and no amount of human goodness or divine grace would ever erase that knowledge.

Then I shook this off. They might understand it as I had at their age, but the complete horror of it would elude them. I remember going to see Schindler’s List with a group from my high school when I was a kid. Throughout it the students had laughed. I knew they were trying to cope, but I’d despised them for it. Now I understand their youth. They were rejecting the knowledge of the horror of mankind. Bless them for that. My students will do the same. Let them have this instance of doublethink, of knowledge they forget while knowing they are consciously forgetting it until they forget even that. Let them laugh.

But I can’t bear to let them trivialize it. I imagine myself saying, “If this book didn’t affect you in a powerful way, if you didn’t recognize the awful truth of it, then there is something deeply wrong with you.” And they would nod and agree that it was both true and horrifying without the slightest inclination to change their own beliefs or actions. Their experience would be just like my first reading: an intellectual exercise divorced from the emotional experience which simultaneously included a coherent and seemingly complete comprehension of the facts of the book, and a disinclination to internalize the wrong-ness to the extent that it might motivate them to a complete understanding. And I would quickly forget my reverence for their innocence and sneer at their naïveté. Despite their agreement, I would think they were the exact kind of horrible little monsters I’d accused them of being: people who are morally culpable for their unconscious cruelty.

But I know that’s wrong. I know that is hypocritical to a degree I cannot bear. I live in a country that incarcerates people without trial, that tortures people to the point that they lose the sanity necessary to be tried for crimes they may never have committed, that attacks another country that never did it any harm for a host of stated reasons, none of which are true and none of which, even if they were true, would any sane person choose to die for. I live in a country where 76% of the populations call themselves Christians, and everyone has access to scripture, but we willingly doublethink ourselves into believing Jesus would make allowances for our militarism and wealth. I live in a country where the government can dirty the skies and call their actions the “Clean Air Act”, and cut down forests and call it the “Healthy Forrest Initiative”, where they can claim they don’t commit “affronts against human decency” and we know, to the same degree of certainty that we know that they exist at all, that they are lying, but we do nothing.

I buy my fast food. I pay my credit card bills. I pay my taxes. I go to my job and do my work, and that work compels me to read a book like 1984, which shows me, beyond any doubt, that a truly sane person would be running through the streets, screaming at the top of his lungs about the madness all around him. I don’t even see myself as cowardly or lazy or immoral. Through doublethink I forget these rational conclusions and accept the status quo with the kind of mindless, trudging will of a man lost in a desert, stumbling aimlessly towards the hope of water. And I help my students do the same, and my son after them. “Don’t laugh during Schindler’s List,” I say, “but don’t go running screaming through the streets, either. Get a job. Get a mortgage. Pay your taxes. Watch your TV and buy the crap they sell you. Be like me.”

My students’ reaction may indicate that they are deeply wrong, but not as much as their teacher. They still may end up crying foul, saying no, running screaming through the streets some day. But me? Well, I guess I love Big Brother just a little too much.

War is Peace.

Freedom is Slavery.

Ignorance is Strength.

2 + 2 = 5

My letter to Santa

Some clever satirist in the town of Hazleton, PA has posted a great site in response to the city’s Illegal Immigrant Relief Act. It poses as a site for the city government, and makes it very clear that Santa, as a foreigner, is not welcome in Hazelton. Check it out:

http://nosantaforhazleton.com/index.html

One part of the site allows people to send letters to Santa. I wrote him a letter. I feel badly that I had to sign it "Sarcastically", because that should be obvious, but I would hate for someone to think I was serious. Here’s my letter:

Dear Santa,

I am so glad the city of Hazleton is standing up to you. I wish my hometown were just as xenophobic and backwards. Instead, we welcome the foreign born because of the silly notion that we are descended from foreigners ourselves. As though Christmas is the time of year to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. How un-American. Because of your magic powers (certainly un-Christian ones, I might add) you are able to do work that would take many Americans years to accomplish. You have taken away so many potential jobs. I know that many people think that foreigners like yourself take away only the jobs that Americans don't want, or can't do as well, but let's face it: it's not like you're breaking your back picking strawberries so your children can eat and get an education. You're just giving away gifts, and foreign-made ones at that! What's with the outsourcing to elves just because they're cheap labor? You should be ashamed of yourself. Thank you, Hazleton, for saying a resounding "No!" to Santa Claus and all other foreigners.

Sarcastically,

Ben Gorman

ESL teacher from Independence, OR

Airhead Outed

In one of my afternoon classes yesterday, a student who has established a solid reputation for being painfully gullible made a public confession. She told the whole class that, earlier in the day, she'd asked a classmate why a particular part of her head (pointing to her temples) felt softer than the rest. He'd explained that just inside that area, between her temples, the head is actually filled with air. She accepted this and was not tipped off by the fact that people kept asking her to explain her new theory throughout the rest of the morning.

Here's my favorite part: When this student shared this with the class another student, sitting in the front row, mumbled under his breath, "There's No Child Left Behind at its best."