Very interesting. I’m now updated on the history of the White House. I’m also reminded that Air Force One is not the plane. Check out the documentary on Youtube. Here’s the first part.

Last night I watched Christiane Amanpour’s Notes from North Korea. In her own words, it is the "holy grail of assignments."

"…when
CNN asked me to cover the historic trip of the New York Philharmonic to
Pyongyang at the end of February, I jumped at the chance. After months
of negotiations, the North Korean government agreed to the orchestra’s
demands for playing Pyongyang, which happily for us included bringing
in a large contingent of journalists. I was under no illusion that we
journalists would have free run of the place — far from it. However,
any access is better than none, and any time is better than never, even
in the dead of freezing North Korean winter."

The reporting was tightly controlled but it was still fascinating
peek at a country and its people under communist rule. My favorite part
of the program was a feature on New York Philharmonic’s  historic concert in North Korea. The music and the emotional reaction of the performers and audience sent shivers up and down my spine.

Here’s a video of the historic concert. New York Philharmonic rocks!

Music is indeed a language that transcends barriers. Hopefully, this is a good start at breaking those barriers as well.

See more of Sungha Jung’s performances on his Myspace page.

Thanks to Breeze for the heads up.

Before the advent of cable, internet, and satellite radio, me and my generation had to endure religious programs on TV and radio during Holy Week. Regular programming gave way to religious themes and classics, like the Ten Commandments. I remember being very disappointed because I would miss an episode of MacGyver. Putragis! So I looked forward to Easter.

But now it’s the other way around. Technology paved the way for the Attention Economy. Attention has become a scarce "commodity," especially with the younger generation who grew up in the age of the Internet. Unless you’re living in a communist country like China where the government has total control of the media, you are free to choose whatever programming you want. Your attention could go wherever your curiosity flows. This is as true for developed nations as for developing nations.

Case in point: With the ubiquity of cable, broadband connection, cell phones, and
online videos, the Catholic Church had to fight for
the attention of its constituents. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has embraced Youtube. The CBCP now has an online video channel for delivering sermons. Check out this sermon. Very useful for those who don’t want to miss the sermons for the Holy Week.

Some people living in developed and secular nations might be smirking right now thinking that posting religious (Catholic) sermons online is laughable at best and appalling at worst. But from the perspective of the Church this is an excellent way of reaching its target audience around the world.

Consider this context: Youtube is very popular in the Philippines and to millions of Filipinos living abroad. Majority of Filipinos had a Catholic upbringing and still believe in its teachings. So why not embrace technology and reach as many adherents as possible?

The bottom line: Technology is the driver. Even the powerful Church has to bow down to the power of technology when it comes to competing in the age of Attention Economy.

I think Eckhart Tolle
is an excellent representative. He has no controversial baggage and is
not aligned with any particular religion or tradition. His "awakening"
is a by-product of serendipity, not via rigid spiritual practice. The
guy is almost certainly authentic as far spiritual teachers go.
He seem to embody what he teaches. You can hear it in the tone of his
voice. You can see it in his serene demeanor. More importantly, his
teachings are easy to understand and relay to a mass audience. No
hifalutin jargons. No esoteric hubris. Yep, it can sound New Agey but
it’s packed with enduring wisdom. No wonder Tolle is a hit with
Oprah and her audience.

Of course, not everyone is happy with the Oprah-Tolle pact. Some call her New Age Oprah – World’s Most Dangerous Woman.
I think some of these people are uninformed about cross-cultural
mystical literature and they tend to conflate spiritual teachings
(that don’t agree with their ideology) into the pejorative term "New
Age." But anyway, Oprah still has the last laugh. I’m glad that she
picked a good representative of the spiritual domain in the person of
Eckhart Tolle.

For those who are interested, you can download the web event here. Here’s part one via Youtube. More videos here.

"The depth of our crisis came home to me at a conference of
environmental journalists last fall, where one climate scientist after
another spoke about the dangers confronting migratory birds, water
supplies, agriculture and food supplies, coastlines—every strand of the
web of life. Their words were carefully chosen, but their voices
revealed their alarm.

"How bad could it get? In
spite of increasingly sophisticated models, no one can predict exactly.
But as the temperature rises, there is increasing disruption to the
interconnected systems that keep our climate stable and within the
narrow range that can support life. The shrinking of the polar ice cap
and the opening of the Northwest Passage are among the clearest signs
yet that the planet is warming faster than climate models predicted.

"The good news is it’s not too late to act.
We have the technology and, in much of the world, we have the social
stability to act. And we have precedents. When the United States
mobilized for World War II, car factories turned to building tanks and
trucks. Americans planted 20 million victory gardens, recycled rubber,
and brought women into the workplace to build battleships." [read more]

This Yes! Magazine Issue is worth checking out.

In the meantime, I find it serendipitous that I watched Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth on DVD just this morning with Director’s Commentary turned on. The commentary added another level of context on why Al Gore is so passionate about his life-long environmental cause. Some people make their arguments from the head. Some people make their arguments from the heart. Al Gore is a master of making arguments with both head and heart.

Case in point: Here’s Al Gore’s conversation with Charlie Rose.

Roy Gould: Worldwide Telescope

"Science educator Roy Gould gives an astonishing sneak preview of Microsoft’s new WorldWide Telescope — a technology that combines feds from satellites and telescopes all over the world and the heavens, and builds a comprehensive view of our universe. (Yes, it’s the technology that made Robert Scoble cry.)"

Watch it and weep in astonishment.

See http://worldwidetelescope.org/

And here’s a post-debate analysis on MSNBC with Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Pat Buchanan.

This election is really getting muddy, feisty, and steamy. Nice.

Charlie Rose program is very fluffy. Thanks to TEDBlog for the heads up!

See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

Colorado’s 208 Commission Reinvents the Broken Wheel

"DENVER, February 1, 2008 — California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s
health reform plan that included mandated health insurance purchases
crashed and burned early this week on the West Coast legislative
highway. But undaunted by that most recent defeat for mandates,
Colorado’s Blue Ribbon Health Reform panel — the 208 Commission –
decided to recommend mandates to the Colorado General Assembly on
Thursday afternoon even though achieving universal coverage through
mandates is already a failed model for reform."

Ten Lessons For the Candidates from the California Healthcare Fiasco

"Proponents of the California bill promised that they had learned from
the Massachusetts debacle and fixed its myriad flaws as they crafted
revised version after revised version in closed door meetings. One
thing they may have learned — roses don’t grow in the dark."

Mythbusting Canadian Healthcare, Part II: Debunking the Free-Marketeers

"Government-run health care is inherently less efficient — because governments themselves are inherently less efficient.
"If anything could finally put the lie to this old conservative canard, the disaster that is our health care system is Exhibit A.

"America spends about 15% of its GDP on health care. Most other
industrialized countries (all of whom have some form of universal care)
spend about 11-12%. According to the WHO, Canada spends a bit over 9%
– and most of the problems within their system come out of the fact
that it’s chronically underfunded compared to the international
average.

"Any system that has people spending more and getting less is, by
definition, not efficient. And these efficiency leaks are, almost
entirely, due to private greed. There is no logical way that a private
system can pay eight-figure CEO compensation packages, turn a handsome
a profit for shareholders, and still be "efficient." In fact, in order
to deliver those profits and salaries, the American system has built up
a vast, Kafkaesque administrative machinery of approval, denial, and
fraud management, which inflates the US system’s administrative costs
to well over double that seen in other countries — or even in our own
public systems, including Medicare and the VA system."

Why Obama, Edwards, Hillary, Romney, Schwarzenegger Don’t Support Single Payer?

"The majority of the American people want a single-payer health care system — Medicare for all.

"The majority of doctors want it.

"A good chunk of hospital CEOs want it.

"But what they want doesn’t appear to matter.

"Why?

"Because a single-payer health care plan would mean the death of the
private health insurance industry and reduced profits for the
pharmaceutical industry.

"Presidential candidates John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton,
and Mitt Romney and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger talk a
lot about universal health care

"But not one of them advocates for single-payer — because single-payer
too directly confronts the big corporate interests profiting off the
miserable health care system we are currently saddled with."

All the more reason to support H.R. 676 (aka Medicare For All).

The question is: Who would more likely to sign the bill, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama? Some say it’s Hillary Clinton. Hopefully, both of them would.