-- Victoria Martin

Brin has written a cogent, powerful essay with an important message. But he has oversimplified his presentation of Romanticism and the Enlightenment. Romanticism isn't the only historical movement to have a dark shadow. The Enlightenment has one too. The Enlightenment aims toward human perfectibility, which can be a horribly dangerous idea in practice. Thinkers like Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault have correctly blamed the Enlightenment for anthropometry (scientific racism), eugenics (the breeding of humans) and euthanasia (practiced by the Nazis on "unfit" people). This does not mean that the Enlightenment itself is bad. But it is essential to recognize that it does have two faces, and one of them is really ugly. If you want to blame 18th and 19th century historical movements for Nazism and communism, you can make every bit as strong a case that the Enlightenment is to blame as that Romanticism is to blame.

Conversely, there's a lot to be said for Romanticism. Romanticism insists on the importance of things that rationalism has no use for -- dreams, visions, art, genius. And Romanticism is not necessarily a friend to power; it was actually Romanticism that destroyed the patronage system by encouraging artists to write or paint whatever they wanted and sell their works on the open market. The good side of Romanticism is just as important to human freedom as the good side of the Enlightenment is. As Brin all too briefly suggests, we really need both of them for any real future.

-- Savannah Jahrling

Brin's central claim that "Star Trek" is better for you than the stealthy pro-elitism poison of George Lucas and his "Star Wars" movies is itself elitist and hypocritical. The universe of "Star Trek" is a utopian people's republic where every collectivist fantasy is realized -- science has solved everything that knee-jerk Hollywood leftism tells us is wrong with humanity: poverty, environmental waste, racism, red-meat eating, etc. -- and where the cost of realizing one's potential is simply membership in the party, oops, Starfleet. Not a whole lot of room for nonconformity in Roddenberry's inner circle of heroes and heroines. I'll leave "Star Trek's" neatly scrubbed New Frontier communards, thank you, and take instead Lucas' scrappy universe of space junk, rugged individualists, opportunistic scoundrels and divinely appointed heroes -- they don't need no stinking (Starfleet) badges.

-- Steve Lee

Looking for life in all the wrong places
BY CINTRA WILSON
(06/16/99)

The closest Cintra Wilson got to the truth in her article was in the title. Mainstream comedy today is a tired, haggard whore, "blowing sailors for spare change and candy bars," in the words of one of the primary architects of the new comedy, Patton Oswalt. To find the real comedy, one must travel off the circuit, away from the Improvs and the Laugh Factorys. Real comedy is happening in small clubs and coffeehouses, away from the glare of TV and dumbing-down of network executives.

I am lucky to live in Los Angeles, and I can name a comedy show worth seeing for every night of the week -- new faces and longtime talents, brutally media-savvy, not afraid to take on an issue like Columbine or Kosovo with a twinkle in their eye and rage in their hearts. There are comedians like Cynthia Levin, whose honesty and fearlessness are awe-inspiring, or Maria Bamford, who frames issues of gender and power in a way so engaging and powerful that one can't help but be astonished; comedians like Joe Wilson, whose searing impression of a Littleton Hallmark store owner the day of the massacre makes you laugh and cry at the same time. People like Zach Galifianakis, with his finely honed sense of the absurd, and Dana Gould, with a gift for catharsis and weird whimsy, make it happen on little stages, sometimes just bare floors. Don't look for what you want in the maw of the beast, but know it is out there, happening every day, for us lucky few with the willingness to search it out.

Don't go to industry showcases, don't go to big-name clubs if you want to see people and ideas that challenge and move you. Rather, seek out the places where people confront their dreams and ambitions head-on, where they lay out a vision of the madness that faces us all. Don't blame real comedy for not being where it was never going to be in the first place. Get out and find it -- it's waiting for you.

-- Andrew Solmssen
Santa Monica, Calif.

Wilson has it wrong; it's not that there isn't any more comedy out there, she's just looking in the wrong places. The best comedy isn't being pumped out by censoring corporations, but by individuals with a little bit of cash and a little bit of motivation, striking out on their own on the Web, where the barriers to entry are nil. Sure, there's a lot of crap out there, but there are some jewels, waiting to be discovered.

-- Jonathan Rosenberg

Linux and Microsoft -- together at last
BY ANDREW LEONARD
(06/16/99)

Andrew Leonard writes: "Every now and then, a strain of thought surfaces in the debate about open source that suggests that the dynamic between Linux and Microsoft doesn't have to be an either-or, zero-sum equation -- that there is plenty of room in the world for multiple operating systems."

Wait a minute! Let's look at the record. Which of these supports open interfaces and interoperability, and which supports closed, proprietary-only operation?

Even in the installation process, Windows attempts to stamp out all other operating systems on a computer. Linux does not (in fact, Linux even supports access to the Windows file systems on dual-boot machines). Linux supports open interface standards and interoperability, whereas Microsoft supports "embrace and extinguish" by using closed proprietary interfaces where possible, and making proprietary and incompatible extensions to open standards where it isn't (consider, for example, what they've tried to do with HTML and Java). If I were in a mood to rant, I'd say that Microsoft isn't even compatible with itself, as evidenced by the inability of the original Office97 to write Office95 formats.

-- Carlie J. Coats Jr.
Chapel Hill, N.C.

Leonard writes, "Microsoft customers had already demonstrated a distinct lack of interest in having a version of Microsoft Office that worked on Linux, so Microsoft had no plans to push forward in that market." Well, they never asked me. I am an Office customer and I would buy 50 for-Linux copies within the next three years, if it was available with Microsoft Access and Front Page. Microsoft knows that the only thing holding many corporate customers back is the lack of Microsoft Office for Linux. Access is a great tool and as a Linux user I wish I had it. However, I hate Windows more than I like Access so I am living without it. Microsoft has the monopoly on Office, and they are using it to protect their monopoly on Windows. They are of course going to claim that their customers displayed a lack of interest in Office for Linux, whether or not it's true. They will resist until the very last possible second -- giving WordPerfect and Star a chance to make a credible alternative on Linux and have an untapped market. I hope this strategy backfires.

-- Mark Lehrer

Drama Queen for a Day: Mr. Mom
(06/15/99)

Perhaps it is funny to look at the ineptness of fathers who try to become mothers for a day. But it seems to perpetuate this stereotype of men who don't know how to be mothers. It's not really that they can't, it's that they haven't bothered to learn how, or they weren't paying attention. I don't necessarily find that funny. I think it's tragic.

It's like printing stories of women who run into failure while trying to do their own engine work on their cars. It's not to say that women aren't capable of doing a traditionally man's job, it's that they were constantly told they couldn't.

When I hear stories about men who can't cook or don't know where to purchase a nipple for their child's bottle, I see passivity. What they are really saying is, I don't want this job, so I'm going to pretend that I can't do it, so that someone else will see my ineptitude and take over. That's not funny.

-- Amy Castor

The best anti-virus defense: Knowledge
BY SCOTT ROSENBERG
(06/16/99)

Scott Rosenberg mentions that zipped files end in .zip, not .exe. This is not always true. So-called "self-extracting" archives are in fact zip files with an extension of .exe, and do not require a program like Winzip to open.

It is also important to note that some versions of Microsoft Outlook activate attachments automatically, without giving you a chance to look at the file name. While this is probably No. 1 on the Microsoft blunder list (next to automatically running Word macros), it is possible to turn off this feature.

-- Owen Williams