Our Israel trip is coming to a close. We, the Emery HS Class of ’09, spent 4 years or more looking forward to this trip. Every year we watched a class leave, every year coming closer ourselves to being that group. The trip finally came, and now its almost over, and we have to finally fully accept that we’re leaving Emery for good. I think it’s nice that we have the trip to ease our removal from the community for both us and the people we love back at home. This has come up constantly in our conversations on the trip, and always has at home: how sad it is that we must leave a loving place that we love coming back to everyday.

As a fitting cap on some of our experiences at Emery and on the trip, we had an amazing discussion yesterday. There was a group of college students at our hotel who work with the middle- and high-school Christian youth group Young Life. A few Emery students started talking with them Friday night and were shocked to be faced with that which we have been warned would happen but we did not want to acknowledge: anti-Israel teachings. The Young Life group had just spent a week in Bethlehem working at a Bible college there and interacting with Palestinian Christians. They had attended two lectures by Palestinian professors talking about the Palestinian situation. Some of the main issues focused on were refugees and the border wall. The Emery students, who were very concerned, spoke with Mr. Dow, who arranged a discussion Saturday afternoon with the Young Life group. It wasn’t mandatory attendance for us Emery students, but most attended.

Emery and the Young Life Group together

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6:15pm Saturday, Emery and Young Life sat down in one big circle of chairs 15 feet from the shore of the Kineret. Mr. Dow led the discussion and Yossi spoke as well. What Dow presented was the content of our Zionism class condensed into 45 minutes, with a focus on the issues most concerning to the Young Life group. I found it very cool that what we learned in the classroom was able to be simply picked up and moved out into real discussion of the issues. The discussion consisted mostly of Young Life students asking a few questions and Dow and Yossi giving a general explanation of the Jewish viewpoint and specific answers to the issues raised by the Palestinian professors. Below is a sampling of content from the discussion from Mr. Dow and Yossi:

It is important to keep in mind the audience for this talk–the Young Lifers. Mr. Dow started by explaining his and Yossi’s bias. Both have backgrounds in Jewish education. Mr. Dow studied medieval Jewish and Arab history as an undergraduate and Yossi has a formal background as a Jewish educator. While he is more left-wing and Yossi more right, there is a “divergent overlap” where our discussion mostly took place. That is, Jewish responses to many of the basic issues behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are agreed upon by many Jews. Next, there is the idea that the Jewish case for Israel can be made entirely with non-Jewish sources. An important source in this category is “From Time Immemorial” by Joan Peters. She was a CBS correspondent who set out to write a book about the conflict expecting that the book would be pro-Palestinian, After she finished with the British sources, she saw how the British did things such as give 70% of mandatory Palestine to the Arabs–Transjordan–and how boats of Jewish Holocaust refugees were turned away from the shores of the Mediterranean as new Arab immigration was secretly allowed. The explanation given is the new discovery of oil there.

One of the biggest issues in this conflict is names. Both sides are guilty here. During my trip to Israel, I’ve seen maps of Israel made by religious Jews who use names other than the West Bank and Gaza for those areas. Nevertheless, the origin of the word Palestine is important. It comes from the Romans, who sought to erase from history any record of Jews having been in Israel after the Jews fought them more successfully than any other group in history. The name Palestine comes from the Philistines, a group that no longer existed at the time.

In this conflict, propaganda is often used. In it, the rhetorical strategy of the half-truth is most powerful. A lie is easily disproven, but a half-truth is most difficult to respond to. A. M. Rosenthal, a New York Times writer, once said that to understand history, you have to look at the entire loaf of bread, and not just the last few slices (“History is a loaf, not slices of bread”). The issues in the conflict are more than 61 years old, or 161 years old. They are 3000 years old – as old as Jewish history. Half-truths come up a huge amount in regard to the issue of refugees. There were about 400-600,000 Arab refugees after 1948.While there are of course cases where Arabs were mistreated in the war, the Jewish policy was that Arabs could stay and become citizens. To be completely honest, of course some Jews were delighted to see them leave though. Why did they leave? They did because the Arab states threatened them and said that if they stayed, they would be considered traitors to the Arabs. Their Arab brothers then took all of them and put them into refugee camps. Why? Because accepting the refugees and integrating them into society is a de facto acceptance of the existence of a Jewish state. If the refugees aren’t in camps, then they aren’t a problem that can be used as a negotiating tool. There is no doubt that there are humans suffering in camps, and of course no Jew likes this. However, the suffering does not continue due to Jewish negligence. Information about this can be found in issues of the Economist from 1947, notably generally an anti-Jewish magazine. As well, there was a roughly equal number–400-600,000–of Jewish refugees from the Arab world who were forcibly kicked out when Israel was founded. They came to Israel and were integrated into the new state.

In our Emery Zionism class, we used a Dow mnemonic device called the “Seven 7s” that covers much of the history behind the conflict. They are:

• 70
  • 2nd temple destroyed
  • Jewish government destroyed, diaspora begins
    -Zionism begins. The word refers to tzion – the hill where the City of David was built. It’s the notion of returning there.
  • Non-Jewish sources for this: the Roman writer Josephus’s book “Destruction of the Jews” and the Arch of Titus in Paris celebrating the destruction of the 2nd temple.
• 7th century
  • Islam founded
  • Sharia (Islasmic law) has the concept of a dhimmi–non-believer. There are suras–verses–in the Quran that explain how the Jews and Christians are to be expected as people of the book. However, they are hated at the same time because while they are monotheists, they don’t accept Mohammed as a prophet. Dhimmis were second class citizens in Arab countries with the Pact of Umar.
• 1897
  • The first Zionist congress took place in Basel, Switzerland, organized by Theodor Herzl after he witnessed the Dryfus affair.
• 1917
  • WWI ends, British control of Palestine begins with the defeat of the Ottoman empire.
  • The half-truth that Zionism is simply an extension of colonialism and imperialism can be addressed here: In reality, the Jews had nothing to do with Britain taking control of the area. The Allies won the war and the spoils included the Ottoman empire, and Britain took Palestine.
  • The British make the Balfour Declaration that looks upon with favor the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
  • No Palestinian movement at this time – the people in Israel saw themselves as Arabs
  • Around this time, Transjordan is created.
• 1937
  • Peel Partition Plan is proposed by the British Peel Commission. It offers to split mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The Jews accept, the Arabs say no.
• 1947
  • The U.N. Partition Plan is proposed after the newly formed United Nations takes control of mandatory Palestine. The Jews accept, the Arabs say no, they will not accept a Jewish state.
• 1967
  • The Six-day war is fought and Israel gains control of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Desert, and Golan Heights. Israel later returns the Sinai and its oil reserves to Egypt to complete a peace agreement.

Another important point is that many Palestinians and Arabs cannot bring themselves to accept the existence of a Jewish state, and so they continue to fight. It is because of this fact that the Israeli border fence is necessary. Yossi has family who was killed by PLO terrorists. This kind of thing really happens here. The family was gunned down in their car within the border of Israel. The fence is meant to help protect the lives of Israeli citizens. Of course it has had some negative effects on Palestinian life, but terrorism cannot be accepted.

The PLO is the Palestinian Liberation Organization. It is the predecessor to the organization that runs Palestinian lands today, the Palestinian Authority. Its charter explains how it wants to destroy the State of Israel and end the Israeli occupation. It was founded in 1964, whereas the Israelis didn’t take over the West Bank or Gaza until 3 years later, in the 1967 in the Six-day war.

There are a lot of people surrounding Israel who simply want to destroy the place. The top 1/3 is vulnerable to Katyusha rocket attacks from Hizbollah in Lebanon. The bottom 1/3 is vulnerable to Qassam rocket attacks from Gaza. This is a country where only the middle 1/3–including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem–is safe. How can Israel not seek to end the fear of 2/3 of its population that a rocket could fall anytime on their home.

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In a few days we’ll be meeting with the David Project, a group that supports Israel advocacy by college students on campuses. I’ve heard them speak before, but it is now that I am fully convinced of their relevancy.

Our Israel trip is coming to a close, and I am excited to have had such an amazing experience here in this beautiful, amazing land.

Gaza Rocket Ranges

Hezbollah Rocket Ranges

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

The new WhiteHouse.gov is already live (broken links and all). Check out this big difference (via http://codeulate.com/?p=24):

Obama’s two line robots.txt:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /includes/

Bush’s robots.txt (too long to put here – 2324 lines).

In a way it says something about the two administrations commitment to transparency and openness.

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Tag clouds of various inaugural speeches (via ReadWriteWeb).

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Was Condi Rice the first African-American President today?? A Constitutional law scholar answers.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

• This post is part of a series I am writing for a class on New Media. Some technical explanations may seem unneeded or lengthy, but I am writing for the benefit of a very intelligent but less technical audience.

Anyone else see any humor in my having an obnoxiously long title for this post?

Personal computers only were really invented in 1976 with the release of the Apple I (and it was the Apple II that really made the market take off starting in 1977). The organization that incited this was the Homebrew Computer Club, a group of hobbyists in Silicon Valley in the mid-’70s who can be called responsible for bringing computing to the masses. Before this, computers were huge machines reserved for businesses or universities, and not devices that just anyone might have in the home. This group was all about sharing their designs and ideas. Even before them, the culture existed. I cannot give salient examples, but the open culture has always existed in parts of the tech world.

Richard Stallman founded the GNU Project (which led to the creation of GNU/Linux) in 1983, 2 years before Windows was first released (but after MS-DOS was around). Unix has been open-source since its creation. Linux has technically been around since 1991 when Linus Torvalds released the kernel), but Unix (specifically BSD Unix, the “free,” non-AT&T version) has been around since 1977. Unix was one of the, if not the, first powerful, free, complete operating/time-sharing system, and Linux was intended to be (and is) a compatible replacement for it, and is now even better and more capable for use by individuals for day-to-day computing.

The original code in Windows that handled the networking was taken right out of Unix. And, the modern (post-2000) Mac operating system is based upon Unix and mostly compatible with Unix and Linux software programs! Both software companies have benefitted from free operating systems in huge ways.

• See this previous post for examples of major open-source projects today.
• See the first paragraph of this previous post for more on the open-source movement.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

• This post is part of a series I am writing for a class on New Media. Some technical explanations may seem unneeded or lengthy, but I am writing for the benefit of a very intelligent but less technical audience.

The Philosophy

Something I think is a really cool offshoot of the kind of thinking that characterized the free speech movement of the ‘60s is the Free culture movement, which supports the “permission culture.” From Wikipedia: “The movement objects to overly restrictive copyright laws, or completely rejects the concepts of copyright and intellectual property, which many members of the movement also argue hinder creativity.” From these ideas came the Copyleft movement, which supports licenses that use copyright law itself to “remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work for others and requiring that the same freedoms be preserved in modified versions” (Wikipedia). It advocates for licenses such as the GNU GPL and Creative Commons licenses that include the Share-alike clause

Arduino

From the free software and permission culture came the open hardware movement as well, exemplified in the Arduino microcontroller platform. What makes the Arduino project unique is that its plans are licensed under a Creative Commons license, so anyone can take the design and improve upon it. Technically, the microcontroller is useful in a wide range of applications because of its inexpensive cost ($50 to buy, less to build yourself), extensibility, and support for standard open-source programming tools. It is useful for people from artists making interactive projects to teachers teaching electronics.

The potential for open hardware projects like this are awesome, and the business models that could be built around them are very compelling even though the designs are free. As this article from Wired discusses, the business model revolves around producing quality versions of the hardware while using the power of the community to improve the product, like any commercial open-source company does. Hardware projects with similar licenses to Arduino include the open-source car and to some degree, the telephony solution Asterisk and the self-replicating protyping machine the RepRap.

Who cares?

The permission culture has shown it is ready for prime time. Openness is here to stay, and technophiles have embraced it. Why don’t you?

See also:

• Arduino’s CC license
• Open-source Philosophy
• General info on open knowledge
• Can’t forget Linux – your friendly neighborhood open-source operating system!
• Google search for “open source hardware”

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

Edit: Aaron and I are having a very nice conversation in the comments on the post. Check it out! I love it when conversations are actually possible without breaking down into personal attacks!

No, FOSS software is not related to piracy:

http://ewsnewmedia.wordpress.com/2008/10/18/harmful-programs/

My response is below the article. I apologize in advance for its rambling and somewhat incoherent qualities. I just had to interupt college apps to respond. One of my next long posts will be that, but in full form with lots of wonderful Wikipedia links like usual.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

I photoshopped this a few months back….

CCTV: For the Greater Good

Original image source: uniplex.net

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

On September 28 2008 SpaceX’s “Falcon 1 has made history as the first privately developed launch vehicle to reach Earth orbit from the ground!”. On Wired.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

• This post is part of a series I am writing for a class on New Media. Some technical explanations may seem unneeded or lengthy, but I am writing for the benefit of a very intelligent but less technical audience.

I am so damn excited for the future. I look at where we are today with tech, and back into the past at where we came from, and then finally at the ideas incubating in academia and industry, and chills run down my spine at the thought of where we will be in 2, 5, 10, 20 years. My favorite anticipation is of ubiquitous (read: 99% coverage over the continental U.S.), speedy Internet access.

The coolest part of this pervasive access would be that every single device could have network access. Now, I do not envision any desk lamps, microwaves, or washing machines with direct access to this network, but they could (and should!) have access via mesh networking through a gateway of some sort in the home.

The effect of this network omnipresence on media will be massively profound. Yes, the dystopian future of Epic 2015 is a distinct possibility that must be managed, but I think that through proper regulation (by both the government and the people), the advantages of ever-present access far outweigh the horrors. My favorite exception beyond simple global Internet access is the combination of that access with other services such as location through GPS. The iPhone and the Android G1 come closest today to providing the kind of access and services envisioned. Applications beyond those already available on the Internet include those that would take advantage of the built in camera and the location awareness. Viewing media on these rich-content devices will be a pleasure, but producing geotagged media on-the-go through applications that share the information quickly with your contacts and friends for everyone’s furtherance are just awesome.

There are a number of technologies currently in development that could begin the process of truly universal wireless access, including WiMAX and LTE. Both standards are designed to be able to work over a range of frequencies. A particularly valuable piece of the spectrum that companies developing and planning to deploy these standards wish to use is the 700 MHz band (also know as the UHF band). This band is extremely valuable because according to some estimates it would possibly allow for network towers with a range twice that of current cell phone towers (although frequency availability would still be an issue, but still the number of towers needed would be vastly less than is needed with the frequencies currently apportioned to cell phone providers). One other not so new but currently mostly underutilized standard is IPv6, which is needed because otherwise there would not be enough Internet Protocol addresses for every device to have one.

Please also see this alternate viewpoint on why we should fear ubiquitous Web access.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.

• This post is part of a series I am writing for a class on New Media. Some technical explanations may seem unneeded or lengthy, but I am writing for the benefit of a very intelligent but less technical audience.

Hurricane Ike is a prime example of the advantages of our ever-increasing interconnectedness through the Internet and wireless services like cell phones (and hopefully eventually, ubiquitous Internet through WiMAX).

Facebook & Twitter

Pre- and post-storm, these three services helped everyone stay connected and informed about each other in ways not possible just a few years ago. The usefulness of Facebook is obvious: the quick and easy way to update your friends about how you are doing (or to complain to your friends around the country) was, and is, to update your Facebook status. Anyone can do this via text messaging from their cell phone, as well as respond to Facebook messages and Wall posts, Many people can browse all of Facebook from their phones, Blackberries, and iPhones too. And, of course, people have slowly regained access to laptops, making updates, and especially checking your friends, as easy as usual.

An especially awesome service that has become hugely popular with the web-savvy crowd has been Twitter. Twitter explains itself best:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Twitter is an example of a Microblogging service. You can update your Twitter account using text messages, their regular and mobile websites, and multiple iPhone applications. My favorite feature is the Twitter Facebook app that automatically changes your Facebook status to your latest Twitter update; both the status and Twitter fulfill the same concept of microblogging, but Twitter is a better-designed service (though oft-plagued with reliability issues). One last cool Twitter feature is that any developer can connect to the software using its API to create cool new services and software such as the Facebook app and their own Twitter search engine. Twitter is a perfect example of a Web 2.0 site.

Texting

Cellphone texting was and is hugely useful during disasters such as Ike. I used it pre- and post-storm to first wish everyone safety, and then after to check in with people. Cellphone companies recommend that during disasters, it is best to use text messages instead of voice to communicate, because otherwise the cell towers become overloaded (It’s not as much of a problem now, a few days after the storm, but I still have been getting more “All circuits are busy, try again later” messages when I try to make calls than I ever have before). AT&T (and the other providers as well I’m sure) sent out public health and safety messages on behalf of government agencies such as the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) reminding people to not use generators indoors and to drink bottled water only. Texting was extremely useful to everyone for person-to-person communication, and with its market penetration, texting really makes the mass dissemination of urgent information in a crisis easier than ever before in history.

A random note: What I found especially intriguing was how for the first 8 hours after the storm, I had better cell service in my house than for the next few days. I think some cell tower sites have backup power supplies or generators that last for the length of most normal power outages, but obviously this storm pushed the backups far beyond the time they would be needed for normally.

Websites & Blogs

For anyone with mobile Internet access, the hands-down, easiest way to stay informed was through the websites of major news channels here in Houston¹. All news sites had mobile versions of their websites set up, and some even offer text message alerts to your phone. Many news channels set up oft-updated (and easily updatable for them) blogs.

1: For more on why the Internet is best, see the “Evaluation” section of my Media Portfolio assignment on Hurricane Ike news coverage

Automated Phone Systems

As all Emery High School students know, automated phone systems are a useful way to notify a large group of people in an emergency about events such as school closures. The EWS website was updated throughout the storm as well. What is notable about phone systems is how today, anyone can set up one of these systems using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and Asterisk (open-source telephony software). Telephony services which used to be the purview of the telephone companies only can now be done by anyone on the cheap. Wow.

Email and other services

Email played a huge role for emergency services in this disaster. Most communications within the emergency management offices, and between themselves and other offices and the media, were done using email. They most likely were not using public Internet access lines, or switched over to as the city lost power, special emergency wireless links. Email is most convenient for the quick dissemination of both time- and non-time-senstive communiques.

One other notable media service was the simulcast of many TV stations’ coverage on FM and AM radio stations. One of the more low-tech, but most reliable, ways to stay informed. Also relevant to a discussion of radio’s role is my aforementioned media portfolio assignment.

Looking Ahead

There will be more disasters. According to many seismologists, California is past due for a large earthquake, and we all know that the hurricanes are relentless. For the next times, for everyone in the country, people need to be more aware of the multitudes of various resources available to them. News stations need to inform viewers in high risk areas; everyone needs to be informed and prepared.

With knowledge of the myriad methods of communication, we can sit secure on the eve of a storm knowing we won’t be subjected to one of our greatest fears: not knowing what’s going on.

From Adam Feldman's blog, blog.pamiproductions.com.