thecyberbrains.com

Sorry, I've been away from the blog for a bit. I'm been traveling hoping to convince some university to give me a tenure track position, but I really have no excuse. I actually posted a couple of days ago about a new service MTV is offering (see below), but that post got lost in the Interwebs. So in true blogger fashion, I'm going to update everyone with a couple of short bullet points. This is really what I should be doing all the time, but I kind of have diarrhea of the fingers I guess. In other words, I type too much.

1. The Job Hunt: Last week I was at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and next week I'll be in Norman, OK interviewing for jobs. I also had a phone interview with Michigan State that I don't think went well enough to lead to a site visit, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. With the economy the way it is and universities, including Missouri, freezing positions, I have to be grateful for what I've received. I still have a bunch of applications out (Hello Oregon, TCU, Arkansas and Tennessee!) that I haven't heard from.

2. Videos on demand: Too bad my earlier post on MTV Music didn't make it because it was filled with lots of self-deprecating wit about my wanna-be rocker days. Regardless, the point was to trumpet the arrival of MTV's new site which does something the network itself hasn't done in about a decade - actually play videos. In fact, the site has nearly every video MTV has ever played, including such luminaries as the 10-minute "Thriller," the first video ever on MTV "Video Killed the Radio Star," and the video that changed my life - Metallica's "One." Too bad it's only the short version. I'm still going to embed it at the end because my head is starting to bang just thinking about it.

3. Sad Economic News: WhizKids, the makers of one of Lincoln's favorite games HeroClix, announced it's going out of business. This post on GeekDad says they are looking for a buyer for the HeroClix franchise. I wonder how much money we've got in the bank? Oh, none because Lincoln and I have spent it all on the little plastic HeroClix figures! In all seriousness, it's a really fun game for anyone who's wonders what it would have been like to command all the powers of the Mandarin.

4. Some newspaper news (well, sort of): I wrote a couple of months ago for The Cyberbrains about how newspaper Web sites have neglected one of the most important elements of their print publications - the Comics page. My suggested solution was to embrace Web only comics such as Homestar Runner. King Features, one of the largest syndicators of comic strips, had a better idea - Create a Web comics presence news organizations can add to their Web sites. It's an interesting idea and could work, if (and this is a big IF) the site and the comic creators will fully embrace the advantages the Web has to offer. I hate to knock a fellow Mizzou alumni, but I really don't see the 85-year-old creator of Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois creating Flash animations or even video strips. More to the point, I don't see King Features giving him the help he needs to do it.

5. Role Model: I try to point out good examples of blogging, especially news blogging, when I can, and I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the inspiration behind this post. Check out Bob Collins of Minnesota Public Radio and his daily feature called NewsCut.

Here's the video I promised. ROCK ON!!

As much as I don't agree with his policies, I have to give Barack Obama credit. Based on my experience working as an election judge at a Columbia, MO polling place on election day, I clearly saw how well Obama and his campaign mobilized voters to hit the polls. In fact, many of the some 500 people I checked in last Tuesday were first time voters, who said they were making the effort to participate in this historic election.
My day as a poll worker almost didn't get started. As many of you know, I'm not a morning person, so before going to bed Monday night, I triple checked my alarm to make sure it would go off at 4 a.m. Well, I should have quadruple checked because it didn't, but for some strange reason, I woke up at 4:45 a.m. anyway. I was late, but I made it well before the polls opened.
A line started forming at about 5:30 a.m. and more than 20 people were waiting before we opened the poll. However, that was really the last line we saw all day. We had a steady trickle of voters the rest of the time, with anticipated rushes at lunchtime and after work never materializing. Our precinct still had a better than 50 % turnout, which was good. But it would have been better, I think if our precinct hadn't been so new. We had at least a dozen people come to our poll mistakenly after getting incorrect directions to another new polling place from Google Maps. I have to wonder how many people gave up after not finding the poll at the place they thought.
However, I was also encouraged by the commitment most voters showed. A couple of people told me they drove around town two hours before finding our poll. We also had scores of people wait extra time while we called the central polling location to verify their addresses or voter registration. In fact, I can think of only one person all day who left in a huff, and I think she came back and did what she needed to vote.
The most encouraging thing to me was the diversity of people who voted. Mothers brought their 18-old sons. Sons brought their 76-year-old mothers, who had never voted before. I even had one woman who said she had lived in the United States for more than 20 years try to vote because she wanted to support Obama. I didn't have the heart to tell her she couldn't vote because she only had a green card. I think the supervisor ended up giving her a provisional ballot anyway.
In all, my experience was positive. The worst parts were waiting. I wished we were busier. I will definitely work at the polls again because it taught me to appreciate our democracy even more. Even if the outcome didn't occur as I had hoped, I witnessed the voice of the people in action, and I'm OK supporting it.

As the digital clock clicked 10 p.m. last night, one of my African-American colleagues stared at the screen in open wonder.

Clyde Bentley in another life

“I never thought it would happen in my lifetime.”

Many of us shared that emotion when the networks declared it was all over and Barrack Obama would become America’s first president of color. But strangely, what flashed through my mind was how often I had heard that phrase.

I think the first time was when as a first-grader sat before a wood-cabineted-but-fuzzy B&W TV to watch the inauguration of the Boeing 707. I still remember a man who had traveled by covered wagon telling a reporter how amazed he was at what had happened in his lifetime.

And since then I’ve heard it again and again. Pocket-sized transistor radios. Man on the moon. Color TV. Cure for polio. A global communicator in every pocket or purse.

Technology moves so quickly now that we say “I never thought I would see that in my lifetime” with a grin and a perfunctory shake of the head. We simply expect technology to amaze.

But I’m saddened that people seldom realize that the breakthroughs in the social world spawn those technological wonders. We instead think of technology molding our society.

Would jet travel have become common without a commercial airline system in both executives and factory workers could share traveler’s impatience? Would we have put a man on the moon without universal education that freed the intellect of even the mechanic’s son? And that special drive to be so human – to be in constant contact with others. Gene Roddenberry recognized it; the cell phone pioneers made it so.
In my lifetime, the power of American justice gave Black students the right to study among people who looked like me. And often to show they were both brighter than me and better suited to lead. My soldier father – raised in a family of bigots — expressed his new norm – “All soldiers are just green.”
And that’s the beauty of today. Obama was not elected because or despite his color but because King’s dream that people will be judge by the content of their character is finally a normal expectation of American life.

Our “breakthroughs” will continue – changes in the definition of “private,” a re-evaluation of what constitutes “home” or “family” or “that one,” a new sense of “now.”

We tech watchers will follow with accolades with the resulting inventions. I may never have thought it would happen in my lifetime, but I certainly will not be surprised if it does.