PEEVES [Here's the first of some usually small objections I have to things I hear or see, with the hope improvement might be sparked]:

1. - It's not "couple of" -- it's "a couple of".

Example: Q. What’s it like to be in a meeting run by Steve Ballmer? A. I’ve changed that, really in the last couple [SOMETHING MISSING RIGHT HERE] years. Namely "OF"!!!

The Objective History of The Navigators - Chapter 2

We humans are learning machines. The Navigator's basic profile is that of someone who champions learning and study throughout life, out of love for knowledge and even more from burning curiosity -- in short, from love of life. The caveat concerning learning and the Navigator, though, is she or he is not a pedant, nor a knowledge miser -- the point is to serve a community conscientiously by presenting reliable perspectives on the affairs of the day that the community can use for navigating the present to arrive again and again at an ever-improving future.

The Navigator is not an oracle, and eschews elevated status, especially sycophancy. Dynasty has no place in the Navigators' fellowship - it's not about wielding power. Don't ask the Navigator, "What should we (or the Community) do?" The pilot will be inclined to answer with a query about what appeals most to the asker, along with some apt suggestions about how to deliberate on the question. But better to answer a question with another question, which a pilot will pose humbly and respectfully, than to make up a glib solution based on a past experience that may not closely match the current one, and skip the always-useful reflective process. Always better to make a little progress in deliberation each time we face a new experience.  (C) 2.3.08 Alan B. Frey 

The Objective History of The Navigators - Continued

The Navigators are citizens chosen by their home communities to represent them in the Navigators' Conference, to carry the voice and wisdom of the community to the Conference, and thus to carry them worldwide, for all who would care to hear that voice and share that wisdom.

A Navigator, or pilot, is chosen by his community based on his or her qualities of liking people, humility and tolerance, worldliness and experience, wisdom and enlightenment, curiosity about the world and universe, leadership ability and compassion, plus willingness and desire to serve. These are rare individuals. Not every community will be able to find and choose a Navigator immediately - it may take years.

The Navigator will spend some of her or his time working and serving in the Navigators' Conference, but the Conference will seek ways to conduct its deliberations using communications technologies so as to limit long distance travel away from home communities as much as possible. The Navigators' Conference will develop and cultivate expertise in communications technologies to ensure that the Conference and its members have and maintain optimum resources and versatility in communications.

The mission of the Navigators is to engage in and promote worldwide deliberation, discussion, and enlightened study and consensus-building around issues of human development and conflict resolution, including economic and environmental stewardship. The Navigators' Conference has as its overarching goals to build and support peaceful communities, and to promote enlightened exploration and discovery. The pilots want understanding and knowledge. Also, they wish to share these with everyone.

The Conference is extra-constitutional: it exists and operates independently of any governmental, national, or corporate body, and does not seek to compete with, replace, or interfere with any such entities.

The Navigators wish to explore and study, confer and deliberate on all matters of importance to life on Earth, and share their thinking and understandings with all who take interest. The Navigators eschew all trappings, or instrumentalities of political, economic, or legal power,  and seek to exert only the influence that thoughtful knowledge and reasoning may carry. The pilots want to serve their communities through providing useful informational guidance, but more importantly, they want to model for their communities the spirit of enlightened exploration and discovery, in the pursuit of ever greater understanding and peaceful progress.

The Conference is an inclusive and collegial body that loosely governs itself through consensus and democratic voting, seeking to build and maintain community cohesion to further its goals of promoting discovery and peaceful community-oriented progress. The Conference's Governing Directors are elected democratically by Navigators from all regions, so each region elects a Director. The Governing Directors are but trusted servants, and are charged with directing and managing the practical logistics of the Conference so progress toward achieving its goals is constantly being achieved, and so that the Navigators are supported in their service to their communities. (C) 2.3.08 Alan B. Frey

"It's Their Platform, Stupid......"

It doesn't take that much research, or even much good ol' Yogi Berra style "obzoivin'" to see that the few wealthy-most individuals and corporate heads have grabbed for themselves a bottleneck of control over the attention of a majority of US citizens, particularly ones who vote. Those citizens "congregate" on the controlled turf of those kingpins, TV-land. I was listening to Eric Alterman, and probably someone else, who were both talking about how people no longer congregate, in fact, in the old ways, such as a bowling league, for example; instead, they sit and watch TV for hours each day, and accept the sort of pap that the media Kings, conservatives all, want to promulgate. So these information gatekeepers lull to sleep our citizenry, and take breaks to villify progressive leaders, voices (they want us awake for that), but they sitcom or "reality" us back to sleep when they want to return to their constitution demolition project, their privatization/corporatization putsch (read: enfasciszation). They have already created this bottleneck, this attention vortex funnel to suck from the people their attention, and thus their conscious awareness of what this greedy, selfish few is up to.

It IS a takeover. The only desirable outcome that would set things right again would involve giving those media platforms back to the people, so that many more, representative voices would be heard.

Research and deliberation topic: how to wrest from the grip of the powerful media moguls the levers of control over the national media so they can be put to better, more democratic and edifying use by all US citizens.