Pixelshot

Wednesday night, for the first time in years, I felt hope for our country.

We need a leader, not just any leader, but a great leader, to unite this country. It won’t happen overnight, nor do I expect that our country will ever completely rid itself of division, but for years we’ve been moving in the wrong direction. Wednesday night I felt change in the air.

Wednesday night when Barack Obama stepped to the podium after winning the Iowa caucus, I felt that I might be witnessing a defining moment for our country, for our world. His speech was exciting, filled with positive, uniting words.

As an independent Mormon, I have paid particular attention to Mitt Romney and have been disappointed. While I like his fiscal experience and his moral standing (and respect him immensely for his ability to raise respect and awareness for Mormons), I dislike his positions on things like Guantanamo Bay and the environment. Hillary is simply, predictably, looking out for herself and churning along with her machine to “make change” with “35 years of experience,” two things that seem to me to be somewhat mutually exclusive. We don’t need another Clinton or another Bush, we need something different.

Some say that Obama is inexperienced (yet he obviously has the necessary skills). But this “inexperience” is, to me, one of his most appealing traits. But I would not call it inexperience, I would call it freshness. He is a man untainted by years of memorizing the party line.

Now that I’ve lived in DC for a while, I’m starting to see how the system works from the inside. Republicans and Democrats have canned, prepared answers to certain problems and they use those positions to lob rocks at each other. It’s a necessary evil, a bicameral system that has worked well for years because, in years past, we recognized the need to compromise, to move to the middle. But our world has changed. We seem to have lost the ability to compromise. We don’t need to lob rocks to protect our positions, we need to find common ground.

Then came the horrible events of September 11th and the following mis-behavior of the current administration. The election of 2004, like none before it, showed a nation divided quite literally–we can all picture the map peppered with red and blue. Our country has moved apart and individuals (and groups) have become more entrenched in our positions. We are scared, defensive (or, in military terms: offensive). We feel uneasy with our country’s direction, fearing that our neighbors will make wrong decisions if given too much power. So we put up defenses and start lobbing rocks.

But Mr. Obama is the one viable candidate that can help us turn this corner. Yes, the other candidates say it, but he believes it. Because “we are not a collection of Red States and Blue States, we are the United States of America; and at this moment, in this election, we are ready to believe again.”

Merry Christmas everyone. We’re enjoying ourselves here in DC, as you’ll see. Although it’s a little boring at times.

Here’s the re-release of this year’s movie, with credits. Special thanks to the crew at National Geographic who helped out! And, of course to the Dino who has been waiting 100 million years for a S&R Christmas movie cameo…

And for any real S&R junkies (sad) here’s the lineup of S&R movies from Christmas past:

http://www.pixelshot.com/2007/12/24/sr-christmas-movie-first-snow-2005/
http://www.pixelshot.com/2007/12/24/sr-christmas-movie-christmas-lights-2004/
http://www.pixelshot.com/2007/12/24/sr-christmas-movie-a-cable-car-christmas-2003/

While you wait for the next installment of the S&R Christmas movies, please enjoy this Christmas “hello” from the Elders in our ward. We were pleased to have them over for brunch and a few minutes of bonding time. You’ll see the set of them at the end of the video (one of the elders, Guenther, was in another room talking to his family).

Merry Christmas everyone!

Lovely BYU campus in the first snow of the season. But, S&R remember the good ol’ days…

This one was filmed on location at BYU - Provo Utah. The city of a billion Christmas lights.

Since I’ve had several requests for past S&R Christmas movies, here’s the recent lineup. We’ve managed to put together a movie every year since we’ve been married (except that last year was more of a new-year’s short short).

So, I’m lining up the movies of Christmas past. (You’ll see how the quality has improved over the years!)
Here’s the first, shot on location in San Francisco - our old home.

saw this on a friend’s blog today - one of those must-see Christmas items:

the second place movie from YouTube’s Project Direct. (See the 1st place movie)

This one’s pretty funny I must say:

This is the winning movie for the YouTube project called Project Direct. Users submit movies to YouTube in specific response to some specific movie guidelines. Each movie had to have two items: a line of dialogue using the word “shenanigans” and a handing off of a photo. This movie is from Brazil and it’s worth the 6 minutes. (For more, see the Project Direct page)

Some of the Pixelshot readers might have noticed a shift in the postings lately. I’ve started to focus more on the intersection between daily life and new media, or “technology” as is the more popular term. More on this in future posts…

This past weekend was a perfect example of how new media has changed daily life. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints held its 177th semi-annual General Conference. This is a wonderful event where, for four 2-hour sessions, members of the church (and anyone who wants to listen) can receive spiritual instruction from various men and women in leadership positions, most notably is the traditional address by the president of the church, our prophet.

DISSEMINATION

What makes this event stand out, aside from the content of the message, is the method of delivery. The Church consists of 13 million members worldwide, in 176 countries, speaking over 100 different languages.

According to the ever-omniscient Wikipedia, the conference is sent to 5700 church facilities (via satellite) and aired on 18 TV stations and 1700 cable stations. This spreads out the spiritual message to 83 countries.

Church members can go to a local meeting house and watch the conference live, depending on time zone. (R. and I did this last October while in Hungary.) Or, for those who would be more cozy at home, like R. and I, you can also dial it up and watch a live video stream on lds.org. If you had a schedule conflict, you can watch the archives at any time.

TRANSLATION

Of course, there is the tiny problem of language. To overcome this obstacle, the church has an elaborate system of translation. During the conference, translators listen in to the messages being presented and translate into their native tongue. (The web site lists 69 different languages!) The translations are routed through the central switchbox in Salt Lake City and sent off to the various countries. In some cases, such as for Spanish in Spain, the translators are physically in their home countries, not in SLC. The original signal is sent, via satellite, to the remote location (say Spain). The local translation is made on the fly (usually with a pre-submitted written text as a cue) then sent back to SLC where it is coupled with the video signal and sent BACK to Spain, to the Spanish meeting houses. All of this happens in seconds!! The net result is that a local Spaniard can sit in their meeting houses and listen to the broadcast with only a few seconds of delay from the actual live event.

Incidentally, it logically follows that this is also one major reason why those speakers who speak English as a second language always deliver their message in English, so as to avoid having to double translate (Spanish to English to Hungarian for example).

I’ve always wanted to hear these speakers speak in their native tongue at Conference (Elder Uchdorf in German for example). But that will have to be left for the next round of communication technology.