What is a Friend?

Today I meet a friend that I haven’t seen in person over 30 years, yet we have known each other for just over 50. We built snow forts together, chased things, listened to music, bicycled city streets and trails, went to state fairs and attended weddings. All of this was done before the Internet was invented or cell phones. As a matter of fact for many of our earlier years both our families were too poor to own a telephone so we ‘dropped by’ to see each other. Now even my grandfather and I use Skype and can call at anytime.

So obviously technology isn’t the thing that keeps friends together, what is it? I read where some say it’s because they were soul mates or complimented each other. I can’t remember the last time I complimented my friend let alone regard him as some sort of soul mate. I think that’s gal talk for I think I like him and I want to. . . Well, you know.

So what keeps people together for longer than most marriages? Rather than me trying to analyze or dissect it, what does friendship mean to you?

Oh and by the way, let’s leave your pets out of this discussion. I know you have a special place in your heart for your pet gold-fish or boa constrictor but lets confine this to another human.

Facebook in real life

Another Brilliant Flame Has Gone Out

The news I read or saw lately has discussed the passing of Steve Jobs (1955-2011), a great inventor and business man of our time. I wrote a blog entry weeks ago talking about how creative and useful many of his devices are which his imagination helped create. I don’t want to diminish his importance however I want to comment on the passing of someone who I believe has done more for humanity than mere invention or savvy business strategy. His passing was a link to our nation’s past and because of him hopefully a continued better future.

Reverend Fred Lee Shuttlesworth (1922-2011) passed away the same day as Steve Jobs. His life’s work wasn’t toiling as an industrial giant, it was spent struggling against hatred, segregation and violence to people who were born with darker color skin. Perhaps because he wasn’t a great speaker as his contemporary, Martin Luther King Jr., and that he had his own set of personal problems, he may have gone unnoticed by many. His death is one of our last links to the early civil rights movement. Remarkable when you understand how violent a period it was, a period of one-sided violence committed against people who came into this world just as I, without choice of color or where we were born.

On Christmas day 1956, persons unknown tried to kill Shuttlesworth by placing sixteen sticks of dynamite under his bedroom window. Shuttlesworth miraculously escaped unharmed even though his house was heavily damaged. A police officer told Shuttlesworth as he came out of his home, “If I were you I’d get out-of-town as quick as I could”. Shuttlesworth told him to tell the KKK that he was not leaving and “I wasn’t saved to run.” This wasn’t a onetime incident in his life because he refused to accept segregation and being treated as a second class citizen in a country where it’s founding documents stated, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Other retaliatory attacks against Rev. Shuttlesworth and his family occurred such as this one; Shuttlesworth and his wife tried to enroll their children in a previously all-white public school in Birmingham in 1957, a mob of Klansmen attacked them. His assailants beat him with chains and brass knuckles in the street while his wife was stabbed. Shuttlesworth lost consciousness however he was carried and driven safely away. By his own count, Shuttlesworth had been bombed twice, beaten into unconsciousness and jailed more than 35 times. Shuttlesworth was at the front of every attempt to desegregate Birmingham through the late 1950s and early 1960s despite a violent streak that led some to call it “Bombingham.”

How any person could remain committed to non-violence and continue his relentless push toward social justice is a testament to his courage and his character.

It may be hard to imagine what the world would have been like without Steve Jobs, more over what would it have been like without the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth?

 Related articles

• Fred Shuttlesworth Dies: The last of three key civil rights leaders (musingbymoonlight.com)
• Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, RIP (orgtheory.wordpress.com)
• Fred Shuttlesworth, Hero, Dies (kaystreet.wordpress.com)

Another Day ~ Another iPhone

Today was the big new product announcement day from Apple. More importantly as Steve Jobs stepped aside earlier this year, this was a milestone in the person leading the presentation of the new iPhone 4S; Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook. Perhaps to some in the tech world this was a bit of a let down, the iPhone many were expecting was the iPhone 5. None the less the iPhone 4S brought forward a maturation and increased options in an already popular product.

Highlights of the new phone are:

• new faster processor… stated to be the same as the iPod processor which gives it faster graphical response.

• Includes an 8 mega-pixel rear-facing camera which is an upgrade of the previous 5 mega-pixel.

• now available on Sprint’s wireless network, in addition to AT&T and Verizon.

• runs on HSPA+ networks, which means download speeds of up to 14.4 Mbps, and uploads reaching 5.8 Mbps

• Voice-Activated Digital Assistant called Siri. A sort of female version of HAL 9000 with connections to Yelp for locating nearby places of interest using your phone GPS data.

• 16 GB of storage starts at $200 with a two-year wireless contract; the 64 GB model costs $400.

• If you have Apple TV plugged in, you can use wireless to stream photos and play videos from iPhone on a larger screen TV. If you don’t have Apple TV, you can use an HDMI cable.

Some people will compare this iPhone with other hand-helds such as  Galaxy SII, HTC Sensation, DROID BIONIC or G2X. As I pointed out prior to this blog entry, when the iPhone 3 was announced, the biggest advantage any hardware vendor can legitimately claim is the availability of application software. The usefulness for any product is in what it can do to assist. Perhaps this isn’t as important to some as which one is the fastest, lightest, larger screen, etc. For me, the iPhone is the lead dog with more applications. The iPhone 4s is offered contractually with insurance for the accidental, I dropped the phone moments many of us have.

An on-line pre-sale for the phone begins on Friday, October 7; the phone will become available in stores on October 14th.

The new iOS 5 launch date is set to be October 12th. The iOS 5 software will be free for the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, iPad, iPod touch 3rd and 4th generations.

Apple announced iOS 5 update will permit the iPhone & iPad through iDevice to operate completely separate from a PC, making them a true netbook competitor.

The iPhone 4 will still be available with 8Gbyte of memory at $99.