Why can’t we celebrate exceptional educators with a nationwide platform to let them reach as many students as possible? Pay them the mega-salary and give them the rockstar treatment. Why can’t the guy in first class sitting next to Vanna White be Mr. Smith – celebrity Algebra 2 teacher one his way to his next Opera appearance?

Just wondering…

Study this email. I don’t recommend you copy his style (which is reminiscent of overindulgent catalog king J. Peterman on “Seinfeld”) but rather think about how honest-to-goodness thankfulness, and transparency can be incorporated into your business, regardless of its size.

Hello there Ben Shoemate

Just wanted to let you know that I sent your bag out just a little bit ago. Your tracking number is listed below along with a link to the shipping company so you can track your leather piece every couple of hours.  To care for your leather piece and read about the photo contest please see the Questions page on the website. I have all sorts of tips to keep your leather in top shape.

Oh, and by the way, I didn’t want to tell you this before you joined, but 10% of the gross amount that you gave to Saddleback went directly to one of those aid organizations on the Dave’s Links page.  If you spent $500 + $20 for shipping then $52 went out to love people.  Basically, you just contributed to drilling a well for an entire village or partially sponsored a 5 year old street kid in Rwanda to get into a loving orphanage and go to one of the best schools in the country. This is the main reason Saddleback Leather exists. Just wanted to let you know… between friends. Thanks for helping.

The way I see it, out of the thousands and thousands of companies in the world, on the Internet or down on the corner selling leather goods, you chose mine and I really do feel honored.  You are very much appreciated.. Welcome to the family.

Thank you and have a great week.

Warm regards,

Dave Munson
Presidente
Saddleback Leather Co

Your order number is SBL-*********.

The tracking numbers are:
******************************
You can track your package by visiting the links below:
http://wwwapps.ups.com/WebTracking/processInputRequest?TypeOfInquiryNumber=T&InquiryNumber1=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The following items have been shipped to you:
line items
———————————————————————–
Small Wallet Light Tobacco Brown (WA-SM-LTB)
quantity: 1
total price: $28.00
———————————————————————–
subtotal:                        $28.00
sales tax:                        $2.28
standard shipping: *             $12.98
*shipping total includes handling and insurance fees
=======================================================================
grand total:                     $43.26
———————————————————————–

This order will be billed to:

Ben Shoemate
************
———————————————————————–

Orders for merchandise ship UPS and will receive a confirmation email and tracking number when your UPS order has shipped.
Orders for gift cards only ship via USPS mail with Delivery Confirmation and usually arrive in 3 to 5 business days.
—

This is an automatically generated email

Even down to letting you know this email was generated automatically – the message is honest and personal. Well done Dave.

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” — Albert Einstein (or was it Leo Cherne?…read on)

I decided to see if I could find out starting, as expected, with a simple Google search. When you search the web using Google for confirmation, its easy to find:

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid” – You get 21,800 results
“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid” + Einstein – 12,100 results
“The computer is incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid.” Cherne – 509 results

We might stop there and say “21,000 web pages is enough evidence for me”, but WHEN did Einstein say it? WHERE? No one seems to know. A large number of these quotes seem respectable enough – many are on university web sites, computer science portals, and in textbooks. The quote was even used as the motto for Super-computing 2006 and used in the key note speech. It seems in fact to be everywhere except in any book, paper, speech, or a citable source by Albert Einstein. By this point I’m 99.9% sure he never said it – but lets keep looking.

Wikiquote (a wikipedia project) tries to track down the actual original source of all quotes lists the “powerful beyond imagination” quote as on of its unverified on the talk page. No verified quote mentions computers at all.

So in this case the web is no help, so let’s try books.

So I switched from Google web search to Google Book search. Book authors normally spend a little more time researching before they publish…most of the time. I was able to find the quote in over 190 books that Google has scanned. Unfortunately the full text is rarely available. Interestingly, most of the newer books – after 2004 readily attribute the quote to Einstein.

But no book actually about Einstein mentions the quote…or anything else about computers.

According to the book – “The New Quotable Einstein” by Freeman Dyson (take a look at the index), Einstein never mentioned computers at all. Why would he, he died in 1955, the best computer of the time looked like this:

The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator), began construction in 1943 and was completed 1946. It occupied about 1,800 square feet, used about 18,000 vacuum tubes, and weighed almost 50 tons. When it was turned off in 1955, (the year Einstein died) its estimated to have done more arithmetic than the entire human race had done prior to 1945. That IS a lot of math, maybe its possible Einstein said it after all, but we still need evidence.
 

1955 in Computer history did seem to be a big year:

So if not Einstein, then who?

“Speaking of Science”, a book of science quotations by Jon Fripp includes the quote – but doesn’t attribute it to Einstein. The entry appears like this:

The Computer is incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate and brilliant. The marriage of the two is a challenge and an opportunity beyond imagination.
– Walesh, 1989 (Summarizing the reasons for using computer modeling for hydrologic and water quality analysis.)

Walesh huh…who’s that? While this is a book of quotes… and the while the back of his book does state that “each quote is carefully referenced”, I know I have seen it earlier than 1989

Lets see if we can find any thing before 1989

Going back to Google book search I see the quote in a fiction book – Fort Momma (Page 37 by Al Gowan - Fiction - 2003) this time attributed to Leo Cherne. Cherne’s version is slightly different: 

Let’s just find the oldest damn reference to it!

Here it is (that I can find) – 1969. In a journal called “Advances in Instrumentation” v.24 pt.4, 1969, page 691, published by Instrument Society of America. Google book search found it on a shelf at the University of Michigan and digitized it on Nov 28, 2007. Here is a bit of context I was able to tease out of Google by searching over and over…

“The net result of the overall program was a group of well trained men that had been training in the same way and, as a result, now operate the machine more uniformly. If you get nothing else out of computer installation other than a well trained crew, it alone makes it worth the effort. Even with a computer there is no substitute for a good operator. Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. On the other hand, a well trained operator as compared with a computer is incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. We think of this feature as “intelligent override” in our control system. We feel you will always have to have this to make decisions about some phases of paper machine operation. Another fringe benefit is accurate production logs. Ours are set up on a 24-hour basis, but can be gotten on demand, to evaluate our progress on a given run. We also integrate stock, chemical, and steam consumption figures to give us a good reliable picture of grade manufacturing costs. In conclusion, we at Eastex feel that what we have done on our No. 4 Machine is merely the beginning. There is no question in our minds that in the future, DDC and the systems engineering method will become the industry standard for process design, installations and operation.”

But who is the author? – Alas, I do not know. Again, I can’t get to the article. If you have access to this book, please let me know. Something tells me there are earlier versions than this, and I doubt this is the reference that popularized it, but due to the copyright fear that grips the internet, I can not get to the top of the page…

Why does this bother me?

People use quotes as a way to strengthen their own position. If I can quote someone you respect, it adds credibility to whatever argument I’m making. Over time, the truth gets further and further away. The biggest names have always attracted people who are more than willing to put words into their mouths for their own gain – Confucious, Jesus, Aristotle, Shakespere, Einstein, and the biggest, most misquoted, of them all – God. All of them have probably been quoted more for the things they never said, than things they actually did say. I imagine this is the most disappointing part of time travel, waiting around to witness words never spoken and deeds never done.

• First, there are actually 20 stars that make up the bear, and the “big dipper” is just his rump and tail – that’s right I said “tail”.
• Second, bears don’t have tails.

Why does this bear have a tail?
According the the Greeks, Zeus, the king of Greek gods, flung this bear into the heavens by its tail, stretching the tail into the shape it has now. Was this story compelling enough that Greeks, Roman’s, and all of Europe and generations of artists would see a bear? Apparently it was:

Artists have been drawing this “bear with a tail” for centuries.

Interestingly, many American Indian tribes who never heard the Greek story, also knew these seven stars as part of a large bear. They saw the three stars of the Dipper’s handle not as a tail, but as three boys chasing a bear. A much better story if you ask me.

To see how other cultures saw these stars, check out this nice site.

I think this image shows it best:

If your not sure, there is an easy way to find out on the Obama website (I’m sure there are many others but I used this one)

http://www.voteforchange.com/index_obama.php

Finding out how to vote is now quick and easy.
Using this tool you can:
1. Register to vote.
2. Request to vote absentee.
3. Find your polling location.

This should only take about 3 minutes.

Blogs

So what’s the deal? Why are blogs and wikis so popular? Are they really as popular a search term as music and movies? To try and find the answer I looked at the cities and countries where the data comes from. Blogs are dominated by the French and Vietnamese?

The word blog returns 3,510,000,000 results worldwide on Google (that’s 3.5 Billion with a B). My research (consisting of asking Google “blogs popular in france”) returned this article. Although it is already 2 years old, it asked the same questions and reports that users of France’s most popular blog spent over an hour there on average versus just 12 minutes in the US.

French blogs stands out in other measurable ways. They are noticeably longer, more critical, more negative, more egocentric and more provocative than their U.S. counterparts, said Laurent Florès, the French-born, New York-based chief executive of CRM Metrix, a company that monitors blogs and other online conversations on behalf of companies seeking feedback on their brands.

“Bloggers in the United States listen to each other and incorporate rival ideas in the discussion,” he said. “French bloggers never compromise their opinions.”

Wiki

Wiki appears to be crazy popular in Japan. Just look at these results:

Let’s ask the same question. First some anecdotal evidence, like this article about a Japanese government official caught doing something he should not have been on the internet…editing wikipedia articles about the robot toys known as Gundam?
I love this quote:

“The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam,” ministry official Tsutomu Shimomura said.

The agriculture ministry verbally reprimanded five other bureaucrats who contributed to entries on movies, typographical mistakes in billboard signs and local politics. The six employees together made 408 entries on the popular Internet encyclopedia from ministry computers since 2003.

Test

One term I that myself use a lot is the word “test”. When ever think my internet connection may have been lost, I open my browser, and just to make sure I’m not looking at a cached version of google, I type test. I figured I was not the only one so test is pretty high on google’s rankings. The suprising thing is where it is popular.

Note that I graphed it versus, xp and jobs. Both of those show new year increases (one for new christmas computers, the other for new years resultions I imagine).

But look how steady test is, which fits my theory that the term “test” is used to actually test google. Now look at the regions:

The Germans are not only number 1, they dominate with the top 5 cities. What is going on here? It does fit the sterotype.

I think we have the building architecture down. But somebody has got to get to work on these wonderful flying machines.
Technically, blimps are soft-body-inflatable aircraft – these are more like zeppelins, rigid-body-lighter-than-air craft. Either way, I would except the longer commutes if I could have a conversation without losing my voice and hearing.

Shared by Ben Shoemate

A few years ago,I lost my ID on my way to Las Vegas. (It turns out I left it on the plane and got it back 6 weeks later with $200 cash still inside. Thanks Southwest!) But I had to fly from Las Vegas to LA, LA back to Las Vegas, and Vegas to Houston with no ID that week. I ended up going through security faster without ID! In Vegas, if do not have ID, the airline will write NO ID – on the ticket. The guard checking IDs will point you to a special line where they “puff test” you for explosives, open all your bags, and xray them. But this line had 5 people in it. The normal line had hundreds! I was though security in 5 mins versus 30!

Consumerist’s Meg Marco sez, “One of our readers describes flying with no ID under the new TSA policy, first hand:”

After about 15 minutes, the main supervisor, Laurie, arrived. Again, Laurie was exceedingly nice and professional, but seemed a little more concerned than Brenda. She asked if I was sure I didn’t have photo ID, like a credit card with my picture on it, or even a CostCo card. I wound up going through my wallet in front of her to show that I didn’t, and she pointed to various cards and receipts in it to ask if they were IDs. I wound up showing her everything to prove I was telling the truth. She repeatedly said they had no way of “verifying” that I was who I said I was, and that someone could have stolen my credit card and traveled under my name. I didn’t want to mention that they shouldn’t need to verify who I am, because I was afraid they could then say I wasn’t cooperating and deny travel on that ground. In fact, I even mentioned several times that I wanted to fully cooperate with them because I was aware that was a component of the new regulation, and they assured me that I was.

Finally satisfied that I didn’t have ID, Laurie took my boarding pass and went away. She came back a few minutes later having photocopied it, and also had an affidavit that she requested I sign. It asked for my name and address, and stated in small print at the bottom that I did not have to fill it out, but if I didn’t I couldn’t fly. It also said that if I choose to fill it out and then provided false info, I would be in violation of federal law.

Link

(Thanks, Meg!)

My first official reason to want to see this new Bolt movie.

The Odyssey, commonly dated to near 800 B.C., describes the 10-year voyage of the Greek general Odysseus to his home on the island of Ithaca after the fall of Troy in approximately 1200 B.C. Toward the end of the story, a seer named Theoclymenus prophecies the death of a group of suitors competing for the affection of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, who is believed to be dead. Theoclymenus delivers his prophecy as the suitors are sitting down for their noontime meal. He foresees them entering Hades and ends his speech with the statement, “The Sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world.” Odysseus dispatches the suitors not long thereafter.

[More]

Update: here is an animated older version. The link above goes to the version 2 story board which has not been animated.

| View | Upload your own

The purpose of this presentation was originally to inspire a group of educators at a single school in Colorado to take their job seriously and invest in education. From that intended audience of 250 people, it has now been seen by millions. The message is clear, the world is changing. More and more of my clients are asking me to help them adapt to this change. To prepare road maps and visions and governance models that will help them adapt. What are you doing to prepare?

This is something NASA has been able to demonstrate by putting atomic clocks in orbit and that the programmers of the GPS satellite system had to take into account to make the system work properly. Clocks (and all other matter) move faster when there is less gravity. Time, as we measure and understand it, passes slower on earth, than in orbit, and it is faster still once you get away from the sun, and even faster when you get out of the Milky Way. This leaves me with 2 questions:

1) If time is passing faster, the further away from a gravitation field you get, wouldn’t that explain why the universe is expanding faster? Eventually, as galaxies get further apart, there is less and less gravity in inner-galactic space, thus (I would assume) time is going faster between galaxies and the “normal” expansion process would be occurring at an accelerated pace. In other words, voids grow faster than matter rich areas of the universe because everything happens faster there. Think of a large balloon that is expanding on a wall of video monitors, some of the videos are playing faster and thus that part is expanding more rapidly. Not only that, be the expansion itself is causing gravity to be less and less on an influence because the galaxies are now further away (more space-time between them). Will time eventually become a run-away engine in the vast emptiness of space? Will the speed of time approach infinity?

Fact: The emptier space is (the less gravity) – the faster time passes.

One way I thought to test this would be to observe the speed of stars (if there are any) or any other matter in the “vast hole in the universe” that was discovered recently. If “emptiness” has the affect of accelerating time, that may be measurable by observing its affect on light traveling through those empty spaces. (objects opposite fast empty holes in the universe would appear closer than they really are)

2) About this time/gravity relationship. I imagine that as gravity approaches infinity as in a black-hole, time approaches zero. If time is slowed down – then what does that say about the spectacular speeds of stars orbiting black-holes? Have those calculations beed adjusted for this? Is there even a mathematical way to express time passing differently in different regions of the universe?

As I type this, it also occurs to me that this may also explain why there seem to be few stars between galaxies – maybe they age and die very quickly. I don’t understand the math well enough to try and calculate the relative difference in the rate of time in inner-galactic space versus on earth – much less in the middle of that billion-light year wide void, but imagine if there is a measurable between the surface of the earth, and 200 miles up in orbit, that a billion-light years of gravity free space might tack on the years pretty quickly.

If any one out there has a science background I would love to hear from you in the comments.

I’m a big fan of Google (always have been) but I’m staring to worry that maybe I’ve given them a little to much trust and power. I have been a beta tester on almost all of their programs. I’ve played with everything in the Google lab, and been an advocate of all their services. But today I was sent a message telling me that my adsense account was disabled. I understand they have to protect the integrity of the system, but after looking into it, I can not figure out what they think I have done wrong. This is what they wrote:

Hello Ben Shoemate,

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your account.

Just how significant a risk am I? I decided to find out.

The email has a link to the “Appeal” form – which when you read it, sounds almost like a guilty plea with questions like: “Provide any relevant information that you believe would explain the invalid click activity we detected“.

Invalid click activity? – ok now I’m really curious, lets go look at the logs – I can’t get into Adsense because, you know, Account Disabled. But I have my logs emailed to me daily, yesterdays log was in my email:

hmmm….no clicks, no earnings…am I not earning enough? So I added up my full 3 months of activity while I have been in the program, (I have never received any checks from Google so it is less than $100) and low and behold the grand total is $18.20.

Technically, as part of the Google Adsense Terms and Conditions I am not allowed to disclose

… click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to You by Google…

But they already cut me off and frankly I don’t care if they turn it back on are not, I just want to know what happened. I mean – if there are “invalid clicks” wouldn’t those show up in my account?

They also ask for my log files, I thought that was a little creepy but complied….you don’t argue with the judge.

Looking a little deeper into the terms and conditions – google has this nice sentence – (try to read it all with one breath, that’s how you know it’s legalese instead of english):

Prohibited Uses. You shall not, and shall not authorize or encourage any third party to: (i) directly or indirectly generate queries, Referral Events, or impressions of or clicks on any Ad, Link, Search Result, or Referral Button through any automated, deceptive, fraudulent or other invalid means, including but not limited to through repeated manual clicks, the use of robots or other automated query tools and/or computer generated search requests, and/or the unauthorized use of other search engine optimization services and/or software;

good so far

(ii) edit, modify, filter or change the order of the information contained in any Ad, Link, Ad Unit, Search Result, or Referral Button, or remove, obscure or minimize any Ad, Link, Ad Unit, Search Result, or Referral Button in any way;

never done any of that but I did make my own search button…

but that is not listed as a no-no…hmm….lets keep reading.

(iii) frame, minimize, remove or otherwise inhibit the full and complete display of any Web page accessed by an end user after clicking on any part of an Ad (“Advertiser Page”), any Search Results Page, or any Referral Page;

I agree, I hate that stuff too and would never do that…

(iv) redirect an end user away from any Advertiser Page, Search Results Page, or Referral Page; provide a version of the Advertiser Page, Search Results Page, or Referral Page that is different from the page an end user would access by going directly to the Advertiser Page, Search Results Page, or Referral Page; intersperse any content between the Ad and the Advertiser Page, between the page containing the Search Box and the Search Results Page, or between the Referral Button and the Referral Page; or otherwise provide anything other than a direct link from an Ad to an Advertiser Page, from the page containing the Search Box to the Search Results Page, or from the Referral Button to the Referral Page;

…never done any of that….

(v) display any Ad(s), Link(s), or Referral Button(s) on any error page, on any registration or “thank you” page (e.g., a page that thanks a user after he/she has registered with the applicable Web site), on any chat page, in any email, or on any Web page or any Web site that contains any pornographic, hate-related, violent, or illegal content;

Is my star wars post too violent? I do have unnatural feelings of malice and hate toward the writers of the dialog in the prequels. Did google’s omniscient spider turn me in? Maybe it was the reference to Herman Goering (Hitler’s right hand man). If so, this is starting to sound very unfair and un-google-like. But they specifically mentioned “invalid clicks” on the appeal form (the email said only “significant risk” but I bet they have a different appeal form for all the haters out there. Let’s keep going…

(vi) directly or indirectly access, launch, and/or activate Ads, Links, Search Results, or Referral Buttons through or from, or otherwise incorporate the Ads, Links, Search Results, or Referral Buttons in, any software application, Web site, or other means other than Your Site(s), and then only to the extent expressly permitted by this Agreement (e.g., while Search Results may be indirectly accessed from Your Site(s), they may only be displayed on the appropriate Google-hosted Web page); (vii) “crawl”, “spider”, index or in any non-transitory manner store or cache information obtained from any Ads, Links, Search Results, or Referral Events, or any part, copy, or derivative thereto;

no, I haven’t done any of this either …

(viii) act in any way that violates any Program Policies posted on the Google Web Site, as may be revised from time to time, or any other agreement between You and Google (including without limitation the Google AdWords program terms), or engage in any action or practice that reflects poorly on Google or otherwise disparages or devalues Google’s reputation or goodwill. You acknowledge that any attempted participation or violation of any of the foregoing is a material breach of this Agreement and that we may pursue any and all applicable legal and equitable remedies against You, including an immediate suspension of Your account or termination of this Agreement, and the pursuit of all available civil or criminal remedies.

Well, I haven’t done any disparaging of google…yet, let’s see how they handle my appeal first.

As far as I know, I have been a perfect Google adsense user and an outstanding and upright citizen of the web. I never clicked my own ads, I never encourage others to click them and I never edited their javascript code. Unless some WordPress plug in is interfering with it that I didn’t notice (and I hate to admit it but I have not examined exactly what these plugins actually do – I kind of take some of them on faith and hope someone else in the community finds the flaw), or maybe someone on my network (thus with my IP) clicked ads (my wife? neighbor on my wi-fi?), but if so, when? I haven’t had any clicks. And as OJ’s lawyer once said – If the clicks don’t fit, you must acquit…or…something like that. Anyway, I do not understand what happened.

So now what? Now I give them 48 hours to review my appeal, and then I try out Amazon’s ad service. I like the idea of advertising books on my site better anyway. Those ads where mostly garbage (oops – hope that wasn’t too disparaging).

]]> http://www.benshoemate.com/2008/01/29/google-adsense-account-disabled/feed/ 83 http://www.benshoemate.com/2008/01/25/speaking-english-in-business-aka-getting-things-done-in-english/ http://www.benshoemate.com/2008/01/25/speaking-english-in-business-aka-getting-things-done-in-english/#comments Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:17:17 +0000 Ben Shoemate http://www.benshoemate.com/2008/01/25/speaking-english-in-business-aka-getting-things-done-in-english/ Most of the work I do is related in some way to communication. I take it seriously enough that it actually hurts me when I am misunderstood. The potential for misunderstanding is magnified on large international projects even when everyone speaks English. English is spoken all over the world by over a billion people, but most of these people speak it at a very basic level as a second language. Even among people who grew up speaking English, it is sometimes difficult to communicate and misunderstandings are common. As a consultant, I work with people from all over the world. They all speak English in very different ways, with different accents and very different cultures. I just finished an international project where the team was 40% Japanese, 20% American, 20% French, with the rest of the team coming from Mexico, Russia, Spain, the Netherlands, India, Australia, Canada, and Brazil.

I have advice for everyone speaking English who is trying to say something important:

1. Never assume people know what you mean, they don’t.
   • Always say it at least twice in a different way, in other words, change the way you say it in case they don’t understand the first time (like I have done here)
   • Always ask them if they understand and what they are going to do. When they tell you their plan, you can tell if they understood.
2. Always say exactly what you want, do not take anything for granted, if you want something you have to ask for it specifically
3. Do NOT try to joke or be funny. Jokes don’t work very well across cultures – they might laugh or smile because you laugh, but in the end  it causes confusion.
4. Take your time and make sure they understand, don’t rush
5. Follow up with the message in writing. After speaking with them, send the a written message with the same information.
6. PowerPoint is the best way to make a point. There is no barrier in the business world that can withstand a good PowerPoint presentation. If it absolutely positively must be communicated to some one, nothing says it better than 10 slides saying the same thing in 10 different ways.
7. Use visuals – don’t just describe something if you have the option of showing them. (but then describe it also)
8. Always clearly state the conclusion you want them to reach
9. Share the data, if their is data that lead you to reach your conclusion give it to your audience (in its raw form) so they look into it and reach their own conclusions

Bottom line: The world is getting increasingly diverse and subtle points get lost, if you want some one to do something it is important to communicate clearly.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Working in the web industry, I am constantly aware of the wealth being generated and the constant, ever increasing change going on. We are truly living in a golden age of wealth and information. I am also aware that I’ve spent my time making other people richer. I missed the first internet bubble, I coasted right through the second web 2.0 rush. And now, in my ear I can hear the distant questions from my future grandchildren who, having read about these golden days in their history book will ask:

“Grandpa, what were you doing when all this was happening? Why didn’t you invent the iPhone?” they’ll ask.
“Well,” I’ll reply, “I guess I was too busy working on other things.”
“Like what?” They’ll ask. They always ask. They are just kids after all. You can not expect them to notice the subtle tension in their grand father’s voice or the the regret in his eyes warning them that some subjects are best not talked about.
“Oh, I don’t remember…some kind of purchasing system for some corporation that threw it away 2 years later.”
“But grandpa, why didn’t you go work at Google!” they say cheerfully flipping back to the colorful page about the search giant. “It says here that even the cleaning staff got stock options and became rich. One of them was even the first man on Mars!”

“Shut up you kids!” I’ll say, “No more books!”

Then when they start to cry I’ll say “Now…who wants ice cream?”

The American Bison, or Buffalo, is the largest terrestrial mammal in North America, and once inhabited the Great Plains in massive herds. They were central to the lives of Native American tribes.

This pile of bison skulls from the 1870s illustrates the extent of their slaughter in the 19th century by white settlers: from a population of about 60 million in 1800 to as few as 750 in 1890. They have since been reintroduced into the wild and are no longer considered a high risk endangered species.

I actually (surprisingly) can not watch them again. Unlike the originals which I can watch over and over, I can not sit through the prequels again. I almost believe the entire prequel series was nothing more than an extravagant commercial for the Lucas Arts games (which are quite good by the way).

A new, new hope?
There is no doubt (for me) that the films will eventually be remade (please let it be in my lifetime). There is too much interest in it. As soon as Lucas decides he is ready to make another billion dollars, he will remake them. And this time, I hope, he will let someone else do the writing and directing. So, in anticipation of a remake, I am offering my opinion. I also hope that by publishing this, I can once and for all exorcise the demons that haunt me and free my mind from the psychological burden Lucas has shackled me with.

Pretend with me that the prequels never existed, and let’s come up with a new story. Frankly I don’t care about episodes 1 or 2, they can and perhaps should be set 100′s or 1000′s of years before (how far back do we need to go in order to get different some new characters?). 1 and 2 and can be truly unique stories featuring the Jedi at the peak of their power. I am only concerned about the one that supposedly connects with the original trilogy. The rise of Darth Vader.

What was wrong with prequels?
If you don’t know, I’m afraid I wont be able to explain it to you. It is obvious for anyone over the age of 12 and there are a ton of reviews online that explain it well and for the most part I agree, yes, the dialog in movies was bad, yes the acting was bad, yes I thought having all the same characters as the original made the universe small, but my main complaint is the story itself. The story of how Anakin Skywalker was corrupted by the dark side. In a movie filled with impossible things, the story of how Anakin became Darth Vader as Lucas told it seems the most impossible. Why? Because nothing in the human experience suggests that corruption works that way.

The corruption of Anakin Skywalker – Lucas Version
A loose cannon Jedi investigating a Trade / Banking conspiracy find a small boy (born from a virgin mother no less) who has high concentrations of Midi-chlorians (cellular bacteria similar to mitochondria and chloroplasts that make the force work). They take him to see the Jedi council for evaluation. They forbid training because (surprise) the boy is too old (nothing new here, apparently this is what they always say). So the Obi-wan trains him. Training Jedi consists of following another Jedia around and smarting off (even Luke had more training than Anakin). By the time he is about 19 he meets his childhood crush and a relationship develops into a cheesy romance. He starts having dreams in which she dies. These dreams, a few speeches about how the Jedi are holding him back, and a few conversations with the Lord of the Sith, are all the motivation he apparently needs to switch to the Dark Side. He walks into the Jedi school, and kills a dozen kids, then tracks down Obi-Wan and tries to kill him. His wife dies, his arms and legs cut off, he is rescued and put into his suit and renamed Darth Vader. Does that make any sense at all to you? It doesn’t to me.

It is impossible that THIS was the life of Anakin Skywalker. It is so inconsistent, so shallow, so unbelievable that I refuse to accept it into my Star Wars universe. Just like I never accepted The Ewok Adventure: Caravan of Courage (1984) , Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985), The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978), or Star Wars: Droids (1985) to be “real” Star Wars” films, so I have disowned the prequels. As Yoda would say: “That bad, they are.”

The true nature of good and evil
The story of Darth Vader should be a story that explores the causes of corruption. What defines a villain? What makes someone evil? This is a topic that is very important in today’s world. As the means of the corrupt get ever more sophisticated, the public needs a good lesson every now and then to build up its immune system against real “evil”. People need to learn again why certain things are wrong, why others are worth fighting for, and to remember that we all have a great capacity to do good and must be on guard against the “Dark Side” of human nature. The truth is, it is very easy to slip into the Dark Side. It happens to good people all the time – its called: “Just doing your job.”

I’ll explain.

What is evil?
My definition of evil is pretty simple – “to act, or fail to act in way that causes or allows suffering”. As there are degrees of suffering there are also degrees of evil. “Failing to act” means apathy, indifference, willful ignorance, or compliance (“Just doing my job”) with policies that lead to death and suffering.

The causes of evil
Buddha may claim suffering is caused by attachment – I’m not disputing that. But causing others to suffer is done because they have something you or someone you work for wants or needs and you are unable or unwilling to make them a fair trade to get it. They are somehow in your way. The root cause is obvious and has been documented for hundreds of years and known as the seven deadly sins:

• Lust - Dante described Lust as an “excessive love”. When does love become excessive? In my opinion it happens the moment it overpowers reason. The man who puts his family, his career, his own life in danger for one night. If you’ve ever been watching the news and wondered what they were thinking, you’ve probably seen someone whose reason was overwhelmed – temporary insanity, lust – the animal within overcomes the thinking man.
• Gluttony - the over-indulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of waste. Nothing describes the current American consumer better. Excessive, unsustainable consumption leads to resource depletion, environmental degradation and reduced ecological health. In order for America to exist the way it does, in order to preserve our “keep up with the Joneses” mentality, we have to use the resources of the entire planet. For everyone on earth to do that, we would need 5 planets. See the StoryofStuff.com. In the longterm these effects can lead to increased conflict over dwindling resources and in the worst case a Malthusian catastrophe. (In agriculture – http://www.themeatrix.com/)
• Greed - Greed is, like Lust and Gluttony, a sin of excess. However, Greed is applied to the acquisition of wealth in particular. These include disloyalty, deliberate betrayal, or treason, especially for personal gain, for example through bribery. Scavenging and hoarding of materials or objects, theft and robbery, especially by means of violence, trickery, or manipulation of authority are all actions that may be inspired by greed.
• Sloth - Apathy, an unwillingness to care, to act, to reach ones full potential. In my view, a failure to take a risk in order to do what is right or to stop suffering. Although it is often seen as one of the lesser sins, in aggregate it has the largest impact. The only way small minorities of people are able to commit the other sins and cause suffering is because the rest of us are sloth. If we all acted as Jedi, or as police of our own communities and took a stand for what was right, no tyrant could exist. Tens of thousands of soldiers have had the opportunity to stop war crimes (maybe even war itself) but for sloth did nothing. War can not happen without the soldiers. Corporations can not rape cultures without workers. Good people have a role in everything bad. You may say, “they will just put someone else in that role” – maybe, but not if everyone said as you do – this is not acceptable, I will not do it, I will fight this.
• Wrath - Dante described vengeance as “love of justice perverted to revenge and spite“. Wrath may be described as inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger. These feelings can manifest as vehement denial of the truth, both to others and in the form of self-denial, impatience with the procedure of law, and the desire to seek revenge outside of the workings of the justice system (such as engaging in vigilantism) and generally wishing to do evil or harm to others. The transgressions borne of vengeance are among the most serious, including murder, assault, and in extreme cases, genocide. (See Crimes against humanity.)
• Envy - St. Thomas Aquinas described Envy as “sorrow for another’s good”. It differs from Greed in that with Greed, you want things – in Envy, it is not so much your wanting, as it is you wanting others NOT to have it. “If I can’t have it, no one can”. In Dante’s Purgatory, the punishment for the envious is to have their eyes sewn shut with wire, because they have gained sinful pleasure from seeing others brought low.
• Pride – In almost every list Pride is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and indeed the ultimate source from which the others arise. It is identified as a desire to be more important or attractive than others. Dante’s definition was “love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one’s neighbor.”

So these are all very human emotions. Any one of them is motivation for evil. Both you and I, dear reader, no doubt have all seven active in us right now. What differentiates good from evil is weather you acknowledge and try to fight these things, or if you plot and cultivate them.

Why good people do bad things
From my experience there are a couple only two valid reasons for people turning really, obviously bad: Chemistry and Culture

Chemistry: I would wager that almost all really big time evil-doers are chemically imbalanced in some way either due to genetics, drug addiction, or disease. Chemicals are at play in all emotions. Change the chemicals you change the nature and the intensity of the emotion. Change it enough and the person loses control. If I was to rewrite Star Wars I would probably give Aniken a drug addiction. Nothing so completely changes a personality, alienates, and dehumanizes people as an addiction to a mind altering drug. Lucas most likely did not want to do this to maintain the family nature of the movie. But come on, if you are going to cut off a mans head in the opening scene I think you should at least warn people that this is an avoidable path you do not have to go down. The most avoidable dehumanizing, desperation causing element in modern society (other than poverty) is drugs. A heroin addiction should do the trick.

Scientists have discovered a trait that thrill seekers seem have in common – lower levels of a brain chemical called monoamine oxydase which seems to control dopamine levels. The less you have, the more a rush you get when something happens. Over time, as with any chemical addiction, your brain adjusts to the higher levels and you need more and more to feel the same high. While most of us can get our fix from everyday life, these people feel the need to jump out of planes, swim with sharks, etc. What starts off as laughing when you are tossed in the air as an infant by a parent, develops into a love of the high dive at the pool, horror movies, roller coasters, sky diving, etc. Anakin does seem to have this thrill seeker trait in the films, but it is not a clear motivation for switching to the dark side. Even the surfer movie Point Break does a better job of equating thrill seeking with crime.

Culture: By far the most damning human control mechanism is loyalty to a grand vision – otherwise known as “the end justifies the means”.

Here is how it works: a leader paints a picture (as he should and as all leaders do). It is a vision of something good. Something you agree with, something you can really get passionate about and believe in. Maybe its is a perfect society, a land of milk and honey, maybe its increased profits, a higher stock price, Christmas bonuses, maybe its a cure for cancer, a higher crop yield, cleaner water, a safe zone for commerce, lower crime, a drug free America, a secure border, an afterlife with God (and seventy virgins), universal health care, or maybe it’s just good old fashioned Freedom. Whatever it is, you agree and you want it. You believe in it, and you want to help make it happen.

So you sign up. You join the military, you take that corporate job, you pay your membership dues, you do what it takes, you go to work. Fine, so do I.

But eventually, there is one small detail, one small bump in the road, one barrier between US and OUR goal. Something you may not totally agree with, but the end justifies the means right? If one man has to die so 100 can live free, thats ok right? We need to dam this river for water and electricity but these people must lose their homes. But hey, that’s progress right? We can get cheaper labor in China and not pay medical benefits. There is gold in that mountain, but to get it we have to pollute that creek. These farmers are growing drugs, we have to burn their fields. We need to move this inventory. We need sell this house – this guy will buy it but he has bad credit - be creative. That meat is bad but we can’t afford to throw it out - be creative. Those people disagree with us, they are ruining our plan, we have to shut them up - be creative. That man is a terrorist. He must die.

Lot’s of bad things happen all the time but most of it is institutionalized. That means the blame is spread out so that each little part is, in and of itself, mostly harmless. It doesn’t trigger anyone’s sense of moral outrage. Even if it is bad, people justify it by “looking at the big picture”. “You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet,” they say. Testing these bombs and building this arsenal ensures our security and provides a deterrent for war. These people are a backward tribe of savages – why shouldn’t we take their resources, if they aren’t using them, someone should. We are just making better use of the land.

“Ok – fine, but wait Ben, now your talking about evil at the large scale of a whole society. What does this have to do with Darth Vader?” you ask.

“That’s right,” I say, “I’m talking about the Empire – the society and culture Darth Vader lived in.”

The Lucifer Effect
The original Star Wars films drew sharp lines between good and evil. Darth Vader was a symbol, a focal point of the culture he lived in. He represented the Empire. He was an emotionless man, entrenched in an emotionless bureaucratic (and evil – i.e. causing suffering left and right) system that dehumanized death and suffering. Remember, in the first movie, the empire (not Darth Vader) committed the biggest atrocity – an entire planet (Alderian) was destroyed just to demonstrate the power of a battle station – the Death Star. The destruction of Alderian was the by far the biggest crime in the entire series and justifies the rebellion. Vader did not pull the trigger or order it himself, but he was an enabler and stood by while it happened. Why? What was the grand vision so large and inspiring it would turn a Jedi into a man that would stand by while that happened. In fact, every one on that Death Star went about their lives as if nothing happened. Did they believe the Empire was bringing peace to the galaxy? Did they think that planet needed to be destroyed? I am reminded of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhicker’s guide to the galaxy where earth is destroyed in the first chapter in order to build a hyperspace bypass. While this is so ludicrous and irrational it is funny, if you suspend disbelief as we are asked to do in a film, you would expect outrage from the characters.

In that system, The Empire, you can understand how a man like Darth Vader could exist. There are easy parallels to governments and corporations on earth. You don’t have to envision Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany to find the effects of institutionalization on individuals. Look at the Stanford prison study an experiment where college students were randomly assigned roles as either prisoners or guards. Once given uniforms the students began to behave violently toward each other. The guards became abusive, the prisoners depressed to such a degree the experiment had to be stopped.

Heroes and Villains
Star Wars created powerful icons in the first films. Icons are useful to society to help us communicate complex ideas very quickly. There are many icons that have this power but Darth Vader was one that stood for ruthless machine-like determination to accomplish an end and to gain more power no matter what the personal cost. He we was willing to destroy his son, even his own body to achieve his goals. In this respect he was no different than any other henchman. But how do people become that way? I imagined that he had been trained to follow orders, without question, to complete the task no matter what must be done. He is the ultimate example of a man who believes the end always justifies the means. It wasn’t until the very end that he discovered he was ruining his own and other people lives for nothing…other than to give more power to the emperor.

After watching the prequels I was very disappointed. Aniken had no strict military training and no discipline. The empire which in the first three films was made up of officers that we even more evil than Darth Vader yet we learned they we all clones in the prequels? huh? The backstory Lucas was telling looked good but made no sense.

Darth Vader Was a Bully
Some kids are bullies. Bullies enjoy being cruel to others. They have contempt for the weak and view them as their prey. They lack empathy and foresight, and do not accept responsibility for their actions. They are concerned only about themselves and crave attention.

• The bully who does not understand social cues and therefore reacts inappropriately and often physically. This is the person that interprets everything as an attack. When accidentally bumped into takes it as an attack and fights back.
• The bully who plans his attacks and is charming to everyone but his victims.
• The bullied bully who gets relief from his own sense of helplessness by overpowering others – 40% of bullies are bullied at home or at school – but Aniken does not seem to be bullied in any sense.
• The bully who is cold and calculating. Since his parents do not monitor his activities or take an interest in his life, he learns to abuse others when no authority figure is looking. His bullying can be planned and relentless, as he constantly humiliates his victim, often getting other children to join him.
• The bully who is prejudice or racist and has not learned empathy and compassion. The parents of these bullies often have prejudices based on race, sex, wealth and achievement. Other people are just competitors who stand in the way. They encourage the child to always be the best in sports or academics, and others must be kept in an inferior position. Aggression is rewarded and respected, and humiliating others is tolerated. Compassion and empathy seem like weaknesses.

There is an excellent article on bullies at http://www.byparents-forparents.com/causesbullies.html

The real story of Darth Vader
This is my version – Aniken had joined the Republican Guard right after high school when he is 18. His strength, determination, courage, and loyalty had rewarded him with promotions eventually putting him at as the right hand man of the emperor (not second in command, but more of a hit man, a dark guard). If you watch the HBO series Rome you see an example of this in the character Lucius Vorenus a soldier of Julies Caesar. From what we learned from Ben Kanobee we imagined they were colleges who at some point in the coarse of carrying out there orders, were faced with a moral delimia, perhaps they we sent a target that contained no enemy combatants but just civilans. OB1 wanted to abort the mission, Aniken disagreed. “We complete the mission.” It is his ruthless determination and lack of compasion that make darth vader an icon in the first films. None of that exists in the prequels.

Changes to the prequels:
Part of me wonders if the prequels should even be about Darth Vader at
all. It seems odd that a Jedi could turn to the Dark side at all, the
only way that could really happen is if, like in real life, the lines
between good an evil we not so clear. Aniken would need to be a man of
strong beliefs and a certainty that the right end justified any means. After thinking about, I have come up with a few options:

Option 1) Aniken Skywalker and the Sorcerers Stone
I would use a more Harry Potter type of training environment. An academy for Jedi where there are classes, tests, and skill challenges. At some point, they are taken to work with Yoda, on Dagobah (thus explaining the bunker Luke and Yoda encounter in Empire Strikes Back). Yoda only trains a few Jedi at a time. Ainikin’s turn comes when his master is in trouble on another mission (similar to what happened to Luke). He almost immediately wants to leave because he believes there is nothing for him to learn there (since Yoda does not teach fighting but rather the more spiritual side of the force) and second, that his friends need him. He leaves one night but instead of helping Ainikin is then captured by the Sith and goes through a tourture process that is meant to break him down and make him convert (similar to to the prison sequence in V for Vendetta that Natalie Portman’s character goes through) . Before releasing him, they inject him with a serum that will make him turn to the dark side.

Once home, medical scans reveal nothing. The other Jedi, even Obi-Wan accuse him of making the whole thing up. He lashes out in anger and violence. At night he has nightmares every night that the serum is turning him. He gets increasingly angry at everything. Tired from lack of sleep, his body gets weaker, his resolve fails. Previously unbeaten in practice deuls he begins to lose to even the weakest Jedi – hurting his proud self esteem. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan decides to investigate if maybe Aniken’s claims of being captured by the Sith might be true. He goes to see Yoda. Yoda retrieves an ancient book on Sith practices. Obi Wan asks why aren’t these files in the Jedi Archives. They are Yoda explains. But in this world of science, only that which is testable remains fact. Over time, with the Sith extinct, these stories went from fact, to history, to legend, to myth. They are still in the archive but now they are tagged as myths. Among the pages, Obi Wan finds the story of how the Sith would inject their protege with colored water. The “serum” would be undetectable by scans (because there is nothing there) but would eat at the young jedi’s mind. It would turn his friends against him and weaken him. Horrified Obi Wan rushes to find Aniken. But Aniken, after being defeated again in a practice deul, losses his temper and takes his real lightsaber and kills the boy.

When Obi-Wan arrives he, he is too late, Aniken stands over the fallen boy, he disarms Aniken and confronts him. In an emotional scene he explains that the serum was just water – Ainken is convenced other wise, he sees this as a final blow to his dignity and is enraged, he grabs his light saber and challenges his master to a deul. In his weak state and frantic state he is no match for Obi-Wan and is defeated and injured quite badly. When Aniken awakens he is with the Sith again. They kidnapped him while he (one of the Sith work at the academy) was unconscious but explain to him that they rescued him. That Obi-Wan had tried to kill him. They fix him up and tell him that he can join them and become a Sith. That they appriciate his power, and that he doesn’t understand the mission of the Sith. They are trying to bring real peace to the galaxy. That the Jedi are corrupt, that they serve a Republic that has made slaves of all systems in order to feed its unbridled overconsumption. They show Aniken the dark side of the galaxy, sweat shops, toxic waste, a string of planets left uninhabitable. The Sith want to bring balance back. But he must prove himself and his loyalty. Aniken, feeling he has no choice and believe in the big picture, accepts. He kneels and is given his weapon and cape. He is trained with the Sith. We see him learning powerful tricks of the Dark Side. At the end of his training he is required to fight to the death with his training partner. He wins. Darth Sidus tells him is now a Jedi Lord and gives him name and his mission.

Option 2) V for Vendetta - This movie is so perfect for the Star Wars remake I honestly believe the Wachowski brothers did it to show Lucas up. Even going so far as to cast Natalie Portman opposite the dark, vengeful, masked hero. Both V and Vader commit crimes, but there is an important difference. The motive is very clear and understandable with V and we can actually relate and cheer him on. Every line, every scene of V could be adapted into a Star Wars Prequel. Apparently I’m not the only one that feels this way either.

Update: The original video that I listed here was removed from youtube and I have not been able to find it again. If you have it, please let me know. It was http://www.youtube.com/v/fxi47t8Q3I4

In fact, I feel so strongly about it that I have developed a kind of selective amnesia that allows me to blissfully pretend that V for Vendetta tells the real story of how Aniken became Darth Vader. In my version the back story has him captured and tortured by a corrupt government with a secret so vile it would destroy them if told. He is forced to by his since of duty to infiltrate and destroy an evil administration.

In a touching scene, Natalie Portman discoveries that V is responsible for a man’s murder.

“Did you kill him?”

“Yes.”

“Will you kill others?”

(Very short pause) “Yes.” (only a very slight sense of remorse, as if he is sorry that it is necessary, not sorry to do it).

Watch V again and you’ll see what I mean. It is a perfect replacement for Star Wars, just add the theme music, change the mask (or not – I don’t think the Guy Fawkes version looks half bad), let James Earl Jones voice do the voice over, add a scene where he sleeps with Natalie Portman, (off camera please) to explain how she has his kids, and instead of dieing at the end, he survives (but barely) and now his suit has life support (so in the prequel he where’s a suit but no heavy breathing in this one, save that for A New Hope). Oh, and instead of three prequels, just have the one…you can even keep the name V for Vendetta – the V stands for Vader.

Keep the plot, the script, the actors, and all the scenes – just change the scenery a little (don’t go overboard damnit!). Now, about the ending….obviously, we need the emperor to survive which does throw a bit of a kink into things…personally I think Star Wars jumped the shark with the introduction of the emperor in Empire Strikes Back, if there was an emperor, he should have been a normal man (no force) and let Vader truly be the last of that religion (except Ben and Yoda…and Luke, and Leia?).

Looks like someone else has the same idea! Take a look at this video:

The only real problem with my V for Vader concept is the same problem the prequels had – which is Vader can not be a lone wolf in Episode 3 and then be entrenched in a bureaucratic hierarchy in A New Hope. I mean, where did all those officers come from.

A much better version with Padme as the emperor

Option 3) “Whenever I hear the word ‘culture’… I release the safety-catch of my light saber”
In order to write a truly good prequel to Star Wars we have to examine the real life stories of the evil second in command. Take for example Herman Goering. This was Hitler’s right hand man. A truly evil man. (It is not until he wakes up on River World that he finds redemption – totally different story). Let’s see if this man’s life would be suitable for adaptation in a Galaxy Far, Far Away.

It takes time to work your way up the evil chain of command and it involves a level of detachment from society, ruthlessness, and a flair for the dramatic – this man had all of these. World War 1 flying ace (achieved through lies and trickery – he steals a plan to pretend to be a part of the air force – but perhaps earned in the end), a true flare for the dramatic including fixing up a castle and dressing in medieval attire, joining the Nazi party where he is injured at a rally (shot in the groin), starts using morphine, becomes a dangerous and violent addict, is locked up in an insane asylum, loses touch with reality.

His famous quotation (which is always apt in these times of war) shows he had the :
Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. …Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

At the end of the war in the Nuremberg Trials the verdict was read:
“There is nothing to be said in mitigation. For Goering was often, indeed almost always, the moving force, second only to his leader. He was the leading war aggressor, both as political and as military leader; he was the director of the slave labour programme and the creator of the oppressive programme against the Jews and other races, at home and abroad. All of these crimes he has frankly admitted. On some specific cases there may be conflict of testimony, but in terms of the broad outline, his own admissions are more than sufficiently wide to be conclusive of his guilt. His guilt is unique in its enormity. The record discloses no excuses for this man.”

Any of these, I feel would be better options. And now I send these ideas out into the web and at last the child in me that loved Star Wars can rest in peace. (But I still want to see them remade.

Lucas, you call me when your ready.

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