Vladimir Kagan's Blog

Show Houses Come and Go... Catch this one!

The DCOTA DesignHouse

Copyright Vladimir Kagan February 28, 2011

 

Somewhere between Palm Beach and Miami, lies Ft. Lauderdale…. Best known for its colossal cruise ships coasting in and out of its harbor every weekend…  But located at the outskirts of town, off I-95 is a little suburb called Dania. It is the home of the DCOTA (Design Center Of The Americas).

 

This Mecca of designer showrooms sponsors an annual Show House…. (We all know that show houses are a dime-a-dozen) they are clever ways to raise funds for charities - sell real estate - flatter vanities - and con vendors into lending furniture and accessories that they never had intended to…. So, why write about this?  Because this one is one of the more funky events on the Show House circuit.

 

Our initial mission was seeing the newly renovated Building A at the DCOTA (in this trilogy of showroom buildings…. The “DesignHouse” was a bonus). The inter-connected buildings had been fine examples of modern showroom architecture (albeit a bit dated…So why fix it if it aint broke …. .Right?.... Wrong!)  Hats off to Charles S. Cohen, President and CEO of the Cohen Brothers Realty Corp. for making the commitment, in this rotten business climate, to reinvent the public space into a modern playground… This renovation was not an act of altruism…(Mr. Cohen does not run a not-for-profit enterprise)…It’s good business and hopefully it will sell the vacant real estate that haunts every landlord. That is what sets Mr. Cohen apart from the rest of the herd…. He had the vision and puts his money where his mouth is. (The Cohen Brothers are no stranger to the Showroom business. They own the D&D in New York, the Houston Decorative Center as well as the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles…. Not an enviable portfolio in this down market, where home furnishing is the only industry more depressed than Real Estate.)

                                        

Charles Cohen, owner of the DCOTA with Ashlee Harrison, the Marketing Director of the Center - presenting design awards at the opening of the DesignHouse exhibit

Walter Thomas of Area Architects And Design of Los Angeles created the renovation. He transformed a cavernous courtyard into an interactive three-dimensional piece of eye candy. People can mill about, meet friends and clients, sip a cup of coffee or just people-watch as they move up and down the elegant circular staircase.

 
The remodeled Atrium of Building A at the DCOTA designed by Walter Thomas of Area Architects And Design of Los Angeles
 

 

Show Houses bring traffic and that is what Design Centers always need.…For good P.R. it’s imperative to have a good theme for a Show House! This year's premise was "Film and Design: The Golden Age of Hollywood" The show is billed as STARS OF DESIGN 2011…. Each designer was given free range in picking a movie for his or her subject matter…. Turn a bunch of designers loose with that admonition and you can appreciate my observation of Funky!

 

Each designer chose a film from the period to inspire their rooms. The result is a playful paraphrase of the films. Naturally, each designer used resources from the DCOTA showrooms, (…where better to go shopping?) and interspersed their rooms with works from their private collections. 

There were young bloods like James Wall and Myron Wolman to the more established forces like Leta Austin Foster and Fanny Haim. And there were the “IN” designers like Deborah Wecselman and Matt Macdonald.

  Fanny Haim of North Miami chose The Last Emperor as her theme... I think she did a great job interpreting the mood of the Palace in the Lost City 

Myron Weiman, a designer from Ft. Laderdale chose There's No Business Like Show Business  Well, it sure is show biz all the way... as Funky as it gets

 

Bruce Sutka chose La Dolce Vita and created a tounge-in-cheek little vignet. Bruce is a West Palm Beach designer

No Show House is complete without a Vladimir Kagan.... Deborah Wecselman from Miami chose my Serpentine Sofa for her Thomas Crown Affair...(as I have never seen the movie, I can't chime in on the interpretation, but Deorah has GOOD taste in sofas!

   
...now I have the good taste to be photographed with a top designer Deborah and me!
 

 This tinny wedge of a room was designed as a Wine Bar by Sofia Joelsson of Sojo Design from Miami, inspired by The Secret Garden... this was one of the more clever rooms in the exhibit.

...and here is Sofia and friends dressed for the movie

I am not certain if Alex Matamoros of Dania, had a script for his Funky reception area... (Dig those cool chairs...now why can't I design stuff like that!)

 The Show House is lodged on the 4^th floor of Building A … a vacant 10,000 Sq feet piece of real estate awaiting a tenant. In the interim it makes great exhibit space, which was subdivided into weird oddment of angular cubicles that the designers juggled into rational rooms…. Necessity is the mother of invention and within these bizarre spaces; each designer tackled the task with originality. The rostrum of designers ranged from emerging to established firms representing the best in south Florida. They are based from Miami to Palm Beach, as well as Naples and the Bahamas.

 

This gal was dressed for the Oscars... only better!

The free-lance photographer, straight out of Central Casting, is ready for the role Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network 

The opening night’s audience took the theme to heart and could not resist dressing their part.…. No holds barred. This could have been a dress rehearsal of one of my favorite comedies, The Bird Cage, (a hilarious romp in Miami Beach, which starred Robin Williams, Nathan Lane and Gene Hackman). The evening’s revelers were straight out of central casting. The background music for the evening should have been the rousing “We are Family”.

 

 The DesignHouse is a cool way for people to see what’s new in design, be inspired, find a decorator, or walk away with some funky ideas.

 

 

 

 

The DCOTA is located at 1855 Griffin Rd., Dania Beach, FL, 33004. (954) 920-7997    The Show House will be open through July 15, Monday through Friday 10 AM -5 PM. (Select Saturdays and extended hours will be scheduled.)  Admission is $15 with 100% of the proceeds benefitting three south Florida cultural institutions. The Wolfsonian Museum in Miami Beach, the Museum of Art in Ft. Lauderdale, and the Palm Beach County Cultural Council. 

 

 

 

 

 

"To Tell The Truth"... some comments

FRIENDLY COMMENTS ON MY SERMON ON TRUTH

 

For my wife, Erica, the World is Black or White – Gray does not exist! …Here is the Gospel according to Erica Wilson-Kagan:

 

TRUE           Perfect, correct, no possibility of wrong

 

FALSE           Incorrect, cannot be true, not right

 

LIE         Something perpetuated by someone who knows what is right but says the opposite

 

TRUTH         The expression of true facts – the noun describing the truth (opposite of false)

 

FALSEHOOD         Words expressing an incorrect premise

 

THE LAWS OF NATURE     It is a fact that fire will burn, water will make you wet…. These are indisputable truths

 

AND my devoted reader and friend, Joe Vitagliano, writes: “In my life, I have found that speaking the truth is best but knowing when is a different challenge.  There are times that the truth is best left unsaid...... No, don't lie.  Just don't speak.”

 

 

 

 

“To Truth or Not to Truth? – That is the question”

Copyright Vladimir Kagan, February 20, 2011

 

 

 

Truth is an illusive Thing: It is sometimes better left unsaid…. It can be hurtful… It can be devastating…. It can be illuminating….. It can change the course of lives and the world….. Are half-truths better than no truth? Is “telling all the truth and nothing but the truth” ever possible? In a Court of Law, who’s telling the truth? Is it better to Fib at times? Is the Fib a lie or a blessing? WikiLeaks has turned the truth upside down… shaken out the lies and left us stripped naked on some important issues…. it also revealed lies, half lies, and truths that none of us need to hear.

                                           

                                                   Who's telling the truth and who's NOT

It is NOT true that “sticks and stones can break your bones but words can never hurt you”. Bones can heal but the damage caused by words is irreparable. Is the jest a lie? Is sheltering us from dire news a lie? In contemporary medical practice, telling the patient the truth is best for him, even if its devastating. (Contrary to that dictate, we had kept my mother alive for five happy years, convincing her that what ailed her was not a cancer but a stomach ulcer…she didn’t really believe it, but she wanted to and played along.) Death is a truth we don’t easily adjust to, is life therefore a lie? Love is often a deceitful truth… We want to believe in it but it is not always as advertised. Need we see explicit sex in our movies to convince us that there is love and passion? Would deleting it be a falsehood? Happiness is often derived from delusionary hopes. Is TRUE happiness a truth or a myth. Is denial a truth or a lie. Is God a truth? To some people, he is not… does that make them heretics? Is the Devil a truth as well? Is a happy marriage based on truth or semi-truths or falsehoods accepted as truths?

 

In search of truth

There is no doubt that honesty is a virtue. How many people have attained nirvana through it? How many lives has it ruined?

 

I do not write in condemnation of truth. Truth is a code to live by… It makes for a good night’s sleep and a cheerful disposition in the morning.

 

Bernie Madoff’s life must be a living hell. Why are there so many divorces? So much litigation?.... What do you call a little truth mixed with big little lies? Wars fought for wrongful claims….. WMD that weren’t there…. Republicans vs. Democrats… who has the grail?

 

Is that what truth is all about?... Oh, how fragile we poor mortal be!

The righteous path

 

 P.S. My wife Erica, doesn't agree with me and is coming up with all sorts of criticism... I'm afraid it will make for another Sunday sermon!!!!

St. Valentinus Day – For lovers of all ages

 

Copyright Vladimir Kagan February 18, 2011

 

Valentine's Day - A brief history

“Valentine's Day is an annual commemoration celebrating love and affection between intimate companions and was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496 AD. (It was deleted from the Roman calendar of saints in 1969 by Pope Paul VI). The day first became associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished.”

"For this was Saint Valentine's Day,

when every bird cometh there to choose his mate."

 

   Under the rule of Emperor Claudius II, (213 – 270 AD) Rome was involved in many bloody and unpopular campaigns. Claudius the Cruel was having a difficult time recruiting soldiers to join his military leagues. He believed that the reason was that Roman men did not want to leave their loves or families. As a result, Claudius cancelled all marriages and engagements in Rome.

 

    The good Saint Valentine was a priest in Rome. He and Saint Marius aided the Christian martyrs and secretly married couples, and for this kind deed Saint Valentine was apprehended and dragged before the Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death and beheaded. Legend says that St. Valentine left a farewell note for the jailer's daughter, who had become his friend, and signed it "From Your Valentine". He died on February 14, 269 A.D.

 

 

 

…… And so today, thanks to kindly Pope Gelasius I, we have a holiday to celebrate LOVE.

 

 Lovers all over the world write sweet declarations of affection to their amours…. often unsigned. Chocolate hearts have always been a favorite, songs have been written, Romeo serenaded Juliet with his song…. Red roses have always been synonymous with love and affection.

 

In the 19^th century, Nantucket whalers, at sea for years on end, created delicate shell pictures called Sailor’s Valentines for their loved ones at home. (I can just see them sitting on some pristine beach in the Pacific, with nubile Tahitian girls sitting beside them as they diligently worked!) These precious works of art are today’s museum pieces and sell for amazingly high prices in the antique market.

 

A Sailor'a Valentine made into a tray table

To celebrate St. Vaenntine's Day, I found these endearing love stories:

 

Love at 30,000 Feet

     A man fell in love with a fellow passenger onboard a flight from Belfast to Newcastle. Sadly, Michael was too shy to ask Juliet for her number, all he remembered was that he sat 2B, and she in 2C.. He implored the airline to help him track her down. The airline obliged; got in touch with Juliet and she promptly called Michael…..They hit it off instantly. . A whirlwind romance followed and they are to get married next month.

A desperate act of love on the highest mountain in Scotland

     A couple became stranded overnight on Ben Nevis in Scotland, in a fierce storm and were unable to descend before darkness… the couple sheltered in a narrow crevice overlooking a 1,000 ft. drop as the temperatures plummeted below zero and gale force winds tore their protective blankets to shreds. Fearing it could be their last night together, Stephan proposed to Beth as they shivered close to hypothermia in the rain. As dawn broke, they managed to get a signal to Beth’s mother on her cell phone, who alerted a local mountain rescue team.

Back in the safety of their hotel, Beth reminded her boyfriend of his proposal. 'All I said to him was, 'I suppose now you'd better get me a ring then,' and he did,' she said. The couple is now planning to get married in March.

 

Our Chinese friends are not immune to Valentines Day

     The Chinese Valentine's Day is known as the Qixi Festival. It is always on the Seventh Day of the Seventh Month on the Chinese calendar, and not on February 14^th.

 Some of the many traditions include girls preparing fruit and incense as offerings to Zhi Nu, the Weaving Maiden, praying to acquire high skills in needlecraft as well as hoping to find a satisfactory husband. Girls place sewing needles in water. If the needle doesn’t sink, it’s a sign of the girl’s maturity and intelligence and she is eligible to find a husband. (Have you every seen a needle float???)

 

A chinese Valentine painting

…And finally an animal love story

     A donkey is making a complete ass of herself after falling in love with a gander. The farm where the unlikely couple lives is in Cottbus, Germany.

     The gander, whose name is Hannibal, met Heidi the donkey when he was put into her enclosure for being too aggressive to be kept with other birds. The couple quickly fell for each other, eating and sleeping together and is now completely inseparable. The gander jealously attacks any male donkey that goes near her; Heidi in turn is not interested in other donkeys and follows Hannibal around all day long!

 

                         

Two sentimental signs of love

                                    

....and how's this for an original way of saying "I Love You"

 

 

     For our own Valentine’s celebration, Erica and I are always invited to the exclusive Club Collette in Palm Beach for a festive evening. The club is decked out with red upholstery, red roses, red tinsel and sequins hanging from chandeliers and the ladies following suite, were dressed in their wear-them-once-a-year Red thousand dollar gowns with slender tubes of glo-lites adorning their necks, intertwined into their obligatory strands of pearls. The celebrants were largely well into their years, but not one gray haired lady in the room! All were meticulously bleached blond, beautifully coiffed with hair spray. Most had one or two face-lifts, but to their credit, all were slim and trim. Each lady was balancing on 3“ high red-soled shoes by Christian Louboutin…While their gents, on the other hand, were uniformly portly and grayed except for the few who chose to hide this telltale sign with a discreet tint of auburn.

 

These were NOT the red clad ladies at our dinner!!!

    The dinner was flawless, with ancient waiters sashaying amongst jovial guests, serving drinks and an abundance of food. The obligatory three-piece orchestra was grinding out cheerful Sinatra tunes with the bandleader mouthing the lyrics into a microphone. (He knew the words, but that is where the similarity ended).

 It was fun to be there with my own cooing turtledove! The menu was over the top. The evening ended with a steaming hot Gran Marnier Soufflé to die for!.... We could hardly tear ourselves away, but alas, our age was showing and our bed was more inviting than the dance floor.

 

 XOXOXOXOX

 

Today, this romantic celebration has descended into a Hallmark Holiday with sales of their kitschy pastiche filling the coffers of the company…. I am proposing we strip Hallmark of this ‘franchise” and donate the proceeds to worthy charities…. It would be a win-win situation.

 

THE BONUS: everyone could rekindle their ability to scribe a true epistle of love!

 

GOD & me

 

 

Copyright Vladimir Kagan February 13, 2011

 

 

….....I finally figured it out!!!

 

God exists because I am too scared to face IT all by myself.

 

…. sure I’m smart on my own…. cocky with my own wisdom….. but when the going gets tough, I hear myself saying “God Help Me”…. not that it always works, but I have a buddy out there that no one can see that makes things easier….. And I am always grateful because I hear myself saying “Thank God” for this or that. When I can’t face the music alone, my inner-self talks to Him, “God is Kind – He is forgiving” and then I can proceed on my reckless way.

 

Atheists are truly brave people because they face the music on their own…no one to talk too, no one to ask for help.

 

Now that I understand my childish need for help, I can understand religion. God wasn’t always just one guy…people were more comfortable having many deities: one for everything that disturbed them. They worshiped thunder and lightning and guys that lived under the sea and guys that raped mortal women and begot demi-gods…. and to make it a level playing field, they even created Goddesses. … and thus the desert tribes created Allah, a cousin of the Jews, who had his own sheikdoms and called themselves Muslims. Indians looked to other spiritual forms, a single guy sitting on a throne was not enough…so they gave Him animal faces, trunks, many hands, snakes and all the other paraphernalia that scared ordinary mortals, these Gods sat on high pedestals and lorded over the hordes. And so they begot Hinduism. Other tribes wanted a more benign spiritual leader…one that was wise but didn’t lord over them…they made him fat and benign with a kind smile and called him Buddha. 

 

Creation of Adam - Michelangelo’s fresco on the Sistine Chapel ceiling painted circa 1511 
 

For the nomadic tribes, this was too much paraphernalia to carry around, so the Jews decided to have only one God…that was revolutionary and disturbed many of the other Gods. The Jewish God was an invisible being; no one could see him, so in due time, many people wanted to give him a face…. Naturally, the wise men created him in our own image…. Sitting on a cloud and dispensing his will through the tip of his finger…. (Michelangelo’s fresco on the Sistine Chapel ceiling painted circa 1511 depicted it very well.) But this God was too ethereal; people needed a man of flesh and blood that could guide them, so a splinter group gave us the Son of God and they called him Jesus Christ and named themselves Christians. Now we had a good person leading us out of trouble. The job grew too big and so he got a bunch of apprentices who were called disciples, to help spread the word. But unfortunately, these kind people were mortals and sooner or later died. But God is forgiving and allowed man to deify these wise men and we were given our saints, who are a little more human than God and we could turn to them for help. God was gender-free (something the church people have forgotten over the years) and created female saints along with the men!

 

Temples were built in their honor… Christians called their houses of worship Churches, Basilica, Cathedrals and for identity, named them after the saints. … Hindus called them Temples, Mandir, Pathi, and Muslims named theirs Mosques. They all had one thing in common, they were exquisite testaments to man’s faith.

 

 

Edifices built in the glory of God 

      

   Jewish Temple Jerusalem •Buddhist Temple Thailand • Monastery Tibet • Chinese Pagoda

          

Russian Orthodox St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow

 

Basilica in Rome                                Cologne Cathedral            Chartres Cathedral

 
    Hindu Temples in India                                        Elephant God detail        more temple details


 

                      

                   Interior of Mosque           Taj Mahal, a Muslim tomb             Mosque

 Very smart people codified man’s fears and gave them substance…. The Jews gave us the Ten Commandments, which were the rules to live by. These Wise Men wrote books of wisdom and called them the Torah, the Bible,the  New and old Testaments and the Koran. But that wasn’t enough for the populace; (Less smart scribes have been laboring for centuries to interpret these elegant words…but in doing so have caused much confusion and havoc.)

 

Man was now on a good track and things seemed to be moving along according to plan.

 

But we forgot about tribal instincts. As man begot more man and spread over the planet, the world started to shrink and each enclave wanted its own identity. They existed because the world was large and people few, (now-a-days it has shrunk exponentially). For mutual security these disparate folks banded together into clans that in turn created mistrust and chasms of differences amongst each sect… But within each of these tribes there were the Alpha vs. Beta types that weren’t satisfied being a homogeneous family…they wanted to dominate…. and they became stronger and stronger until they begat Kings and their Kingdoms, Phyfe’s and their Fiefdoms. Sheiks and their Sheikdoms. To perpetuate their own authority, each leader latched on to his own deity in order to bolster their supremacy. They jostled for power amongst themselves and their neighbors and in their self-righteousness, shielded their evil doings behind their powerful religious potentates to launch cruel wars and crusades. Anybody who didn’t believe in their morality became an infidel worthy of destruction.

....But now I am getting over my head…. Theology and chronological history is not really my forte.

 

BUT now I do understand how all these wonderful people were invented…. They came about by weaklings like me, who couldn’t face the music alone.

 

Thank GOD that there is a GOD.

 

 

 

 

 

Social Networking – The George Orwell of the 21st Century

 

Copyright Vladimir Kagan February 7, 2011

 

 

George Orwell’s book, 1984, published in 1949 - tried to predict what it was going to be like forty years hence….“Big Brother is watching you”…. Poor George couldn’t begin to fathom what is going on today!

 

Most of us (of a certain vintage) are uninitiated into the jargons of today’s youth. We may have a glimmer of what Social Networking is; if you are a movie fan and have seen the movie by the same name (it’s been nominated for an Oscar) you’re obviously very savvy.… You may have been invited to become a friend on FaceBook… If you have great savoir-faire, you may even have brushed up against Twitter, (Sarah Palin’s favorite form of communication)…. I’m almost certain that You-tube is beyond your kin, unless you have grandchildren hovering near you.

 

This was the context of The Coudert Institute’s second mesmerizing forum of the year titled: “What is Social Media? Where is it Going? Privacy and Governance on the Mobile Net”

 

Dale Coudert opening the second of her fascinating seminars - Social Networking and what it means to us

….All this movie stuff is not what it is about. IT’S ABOUT YOU and where you’ve been, what you are doing, how you are feeling, what you are buying, what you are eating, who your friends are and lots and lots more. Who’s interested in this?.... Walmart for one, your government for certain, telemarketers, hucksters, Wall Street Bankers, City planners, the Department of Defense and of course, our enemies.

 

This is an amazing tool for good and evil…. how to control and regulate it was much of the morning’s discussion. We were treated to this erudite information by two of the country’s top experts in the field…. John Henry Clippinger, PhD, currently Co-Director of the Law Lab at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and Professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland, Director of MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory and the MIT Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program.

 

John Henry Clippinger, PhD, from Harvard University and Professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland of MIT about to square off on the pros and cons of Social Networking

This was the stuff for advanced students’ four-year graduate course in Cyber Media…. We got a glimpse of the complexity of the subject in three intensive hours of conversation with these experts.

"Sandy" Pentland, MIT's guru on Cyber space introducing us to "Human Dynamics 101"

 

Dr. Clippinger driving home the good and evils of the new world of Cyber information

It is inconceivable how sophisticated the technology is in this rarefied field. Why it is going to change everything…. what we can or can’t do about it… It is Email turned inside out. It acquires its knowledge not from your computer (that’s old fashioned), but from your cell phones, GPS, I-Pads, monitoring medical implants and other smart paraphernalia. The “boys” at MIT can predict your health before you can…they know when you might be catching the Flu, they know when you are stressed-out (even if you don’t know it), they can track the flow of infectious viruses, a change in your personal behavior, (even if you are ducking out for a clandestine affair!) they know when you go to the bathroom, they are privy to when, where and what you are shopping, they can foretell who are your friends with 95% accuracy, 40% who are not your friends now but may become so within 6 months…..….The list goes on. All this requires NO new hardware…. the signals already exist…. This thing crosses borders seamlessly! No wonder huge conglomerate merchants will pay dearly for this information: These companies can tailor their marketing accordingly: predict buying trends, control inventory flow, explore new markets with accuracy, adjust for regional proclivity and corner markets at their whim. (And you can’t do a darn thing about it!)

 

This intrusive technology can also determine

• If you have or are susceptible to Diabetes
• Where cops should be located on a Saturday night
• Where taxicabs in New York City pick up most passengers
• Infant mortality and where it is most prevalent

How to regulate this sensitive material is the joint project of the MIT and Harvard teams.

 

There’s an upside to this information gathering: It’s called “Shared Mobility”. It can predict traffic jams, people movement, vehicular movement, and social behavior. In emergencies like Katrina and Haiti it can locate victims and survivors, it can find the nearest heavy equipment for clearing roads, mudslides, prevent traffic jams, locate and move medical personnel into the troubled areas.

 

All this knowledge is the 21^st century version of the water cooler gossip at the office. Executive teams had for years tried to break-up this café klatch mentality by staggering, coffee breaks and discouraging discourse amongst its employees. In fact, it has been established that that wasn’t all bad. Gossip is the best form of disseminating information…. A large corporate entity saved $15 million dollars a year when they brought back the communal coffee break!

 

This flow of information is like the 1993 play (and movie): Six Degrees of Separation… By example, to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the Internet, a contest was established called the Grand Challenge. 10 balloons were hidden throughout the USA…. it took the MIT team 9 hours to locate every one of them!

 

NUDGE, a new computer economics breaks it down this way:

 

Habitual                                                Attentive                                 

Fast                                                          Slow

Parallel                                                     Serial

Automatic                                                Controlled

Associates                                                Rule Based

Frankly, I haven’t the foggiest idea what this means)

But Dr. Clippinger assured me that it means 99% of what we do is habitual and imitative - and not "rational" or conscious!

 

Our current methods of gauging demographics are over fifty years old. Census taking is inaccurate and costly…the new technology is 10 times better and more precise.

 

A test study was conducted in San Francisco where they discovered entirely different patterns of activities in different parts of the city…. Like two separate communities… it was a window on tribal behavior. It would allow the city to explore new business models, population growth, and where the people really are and what they are doing!

 

 

The world we live in is full of sensors, whether at traffic lights, every corner in Las Vegas, subways, airports, department stores, boutiques, Hotel lobbies, even the lavatory…. What’s most troublesome is lack of accountability.

 

Adding to this heavy dose of Cyber reality, Dr. Clippinger told us about coming changes…where we’ve been and where we are going…. Not surprising, this explosion of information started with the hackers of twenty years ago…. This morphed into new early technologies such as Tech Model, Arpanet which became the Internet, Richard Stallman’s free software, open licenses, GPL, Browsers, The World Wide Web, Yahoo, Amazon, Portals, MSN, EBay, search engines such as Google…. We are in a fast evolving world of information. New players not dreamed of ten years ago, invaded our virtual world with social networking and chat messaging, BBS, Pod Casting, Friendstel, Twitter, Myspace, Orkut and of course Mark Zuckerberg‘s FaceBook.

 

Mark Zuckerberg, the sweat heart of the information age

The "smart-ass" kids that run today's world... Mark Zuckerberg and one of his cohorts at FaceBook

....and the rest of the FaceBook team (these photos were cribbed from the recent Time Magazine's cover story on Mark Zuckerberg as the "Person of The Year")

If you think that all it takes to access Facebook is to punch in a few words on your laptop and it floats to outer space... you are mistaken! This is just a part of FaceBook's elaborate electronics that make it all seem easy

Question: Whom can you trust???? No easy way to distinguish friend from foe. It can promote transparency in government. It can also foster revolutions as we are seeing in Egypt today.

 

IF Professor Pentland taught us how to swim in waters over our heads, Dr. Clippinger took us over the falls!... They jokingly said, MIT invents the Bomb and Harvard tell us where to drop it!

 

This well greased Mutt and Jeff team introduced us to the interesting correlation of “honest signaling” in the animal world and the Homo sapiens world we live in:

 

A Peacock’s display of his rainbow colors takes energy and is rewarded with mating privileges. It is an honest signal because it cannot be faked.

Researchers took an ordinary sparrow and tinted his feathers to replicate the dominant bird in the neighborhood. This worked fine for a while until his rivals figured out that he was a fake: then they killed him! Fellow sparrows found out that he was a fraud. Animals are good at that. Nature selects for that ability to detect dishonest signals and punish the deceivers. 

Deer, Moose and their ilk, posture with their antlers and win their superior standing with these obvious signs of their masculinity. In the REAL world, organizations posture in a similar fashion: Banks built tall and impressive buildings; insurance companies like AIG built armor around their reputation (until, like the sparrow, they crumbled from their own deceit). Citibank pouted its feathers to attain its dominance in the financial world, Lehman Brothers collapsed when their fabrications gave way to reality. These companies propagated falsehoods just like the little sparrow.

This posturing is regularly promulgated in political defamation. A New Yorker cover two years ago, depicting Obama and his wife Michelle, as Muslim jihadists…. A crude jest that took root and proliferated into a backlash of falsehood still circulating in conservative circles today. This defamation exists on both sides of the political spectrum. President Bush was vilified and political cartoonists practice this on a daily basis in their News Papers.

 

A bad judgment call by The New Yorker and its lasting consequences

The Internet is rife with fabricated events, which give legitimacy to falsehoods, BUT it also serves as a conduit for whistle blowers to expose the truth. This brings us to the now infamous WikiLeaks. Time Magazine suggested they could become as important to journalism as the Freedom of Information Act. Others consider Julian Assange, its founder, a traitor worthy of hanging. Actually, both are right. He has made whistle blowing a fine art and given them the stature of celebrated street artists…. He has also put people and governments in unimaginable jeopardy.

 

Julian Assange, the bete noir of the information age

The underground bunker of WikiLeaks

What fascinates me is the hardware behind all this cyber stuff. A recent photo in the New York Times showed the subterranean bomb shelter in Stockholm housing WikiLeaks high-powered hardware. It looks like the control center in an ultra-secured military bunker. Mark Zuckerberg’s FaceBook complex is similarly awesome. These “kids” are geniuses not only in the embryonic stage of their innovation, they take their start-ups to the industrial level and have the vision to capitalize on it…. making colossal profits.

 

This heady stuff calls for reinventing ourselves in 3D. You need to understand where and what you are dealing with…. And most of all, to protect yourself from this intrusion. Your digital footprint is everywhere! There will be 400 million medical sensors floating out in cyber space…. This could become commercial fodder for untold number of industries.

 

The mobile phone industry is growing exponentially…. cell phones are taking over the world…. remote areas where electricity is out of reach, there will be solar chargers. Inteli-pads that now cost $600 will come down to the $50s.

 

Cloud computing is the next phase in the evolution of software services…. no physical location…unlimited storage - under no one jurisdiction.

 

All this progress puts us face to face with the need for governance. Some people call for a Constitutional Convention of the 21^st Century. Privacy is the buzzword. There is a call for a global trust framework by regulators in the US, EU and Asia…. Worried corporations are seeking answers: Pay-pal is trying to rewrite their codes, Microsoft, Bank of America, AT&T, Verizon…. are active players in this game and turning to their think tanks for guidance.

 

Cyber technology is unstoppable. It is a truth that can be used for good or bad. We are fast loosing our privacy…but the world, by-and-large is a safer place to live in…. for the time being!

 

There Is No Opting Out!

 

 

 

 

 

 For information on the COUDERT INSTITUTE

www.coudertinstitute.org

[email protected]

 

 

Dr. John Henry Clippinger is author of A Crowd of One: the Future of Individual Identity

 

 

 

 

To read more of Vladimir Kagan’s Blogs from the sublime to the ridiculous, go to:

http://vladimirkagan.typepad.com/vladimir-kagans-blog/

or Google: Vladimir Kagan Blog

 

 

 

 

A wakeup call on Homeland None-Security

 

Copyright Vladimir Kagan, February 2, 2011

 

Last Thursday, a foursome of erudite experts in the field treated us to an earful of distressing information. It was The Coudert Institute’s first seminar of the year. This eye-opening meeting was held at an exclusive Club in Palm Beach, on a cloudless, benign, sunny day, belying the thunderous news we were to receive on the inside.

 

Dale Coudert opening last week's Homeland Security seminar...seated from left to right: Dave McIntyre, Col. Randall Larsen, Dale Coudert, Dr. Akhila Kosaraju, Linda Mortamer (a guest)

Col. Randall J. Larsen, U.S. Air Force (retired), is chief executive officer of the WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) Center, a not-for-profit research organization he co-founded with former U.S. Senators Bob Graham (D-FL) and Jim Talent (R-MO). Col. Larsen is author of Our Own Worst Enemy, Grand Central Publishing.

 

Dave McIntyre is the Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Homeland Security and Defense Programs at the National Graduate School, and a visiting fellow at the Institute for Homeland Security in Washington D.C.

 

Dr. Akhila Kosaraju is the Vice President for Global Development of SIGA Technologies, a company specializing in small molecule drugs for emerging disease threat and biological warfare defense. Dr. Kosaraju was a White House appointee in the Pentagon, serving as special assistant o the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. She is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and is a member of the Board of the Alliance for Biosecurity and International Security and Biopolicy Institute.

 

Craig Vanderwagen, M.D., representing Cleveland BioLabs, (CBLI) is a partner with Martin, Blanck & Associates, a federal health service-consulting firm based in Falls Church, VA. Vanderwagen was the founding Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Vanderwagen is a practicing physician, who spent twenty-five years his life serving the medical needs the disparate Indian tribes (575 sovereign nations - by Federal count) throughout the west and Alaska.

 

With these heavy credentials, the foursome started to read us the riot act. It was a remarkably casual presentation with an awesome message…. WE ARE NOT PREPARED.

 

Col. Larsen, as the moderator and first speaker, started the morning by regaling us with his amazing credentials. He was a jet fighter pilot in his early career and finally, operational commander of the 89 squadron, the VIP unit in charge Air Force One and Two! He opened with an appraisal of our security systems, which have survived for over 6o years under the acronym DIME (Diplomacy, Information, Military, Economic), They were very efficient during the cold war and are totally out of sync in the 21^st Century. Each Cabinet Ministry working on its own with duplications, obsolescence, unshared information, misguided objectives, and wasted resources… By example, the three branches of the military can’t even agree on a single fighter airplane, wasting tens of billions of dollars.

 

Col. Randy Larsen introducing us to the day's subject

Today, the proposed objective of screening every shipping container entering our ports with radiation detectors is impractical. This is the least likely route for any nuclear materials entering our country. 

 

1944 photo of scientist carrying the Plutonium used in the first atomic bomb

 Our enemies functions outside of the box, it’s no longer a government or a predictable military threat, it is generated in caves, in kitchens, on the internet…mobile, illusive and virtually undetectable with our current infrastructure. Our intelligence organizations have too long focused on the wrong enemy. Almost all attacks in the last ten years were foreseeable had we properly put two and two together. In hindsight, “They saw IT coming, but didn’t coordinate or react in a timely fashion”. We are too departmentalized with the right hand not knowing what the left is doing. Our interdisciplinary bureaucracies are inefficient and too expensive. We can’t afford the right stuff when forty cents out of every dollar spent goes to pay off the debt.

 

Conclusion: Drug Lords in Mexico have more sophisticated communication capability than we…. Their money laundering is sophisticated and reaches as far as China…. The Cartels are like Wal-Mart; they have huge resources, spread all over the world: buy cheap and sell expensive. Our enemies are financed by rogue nations and individuals bent on our destruction.

 

Opening with this “light entertainment”, he went to the core issue. Controlling nuclear materials worldwide. The ONLY preventative tactic at our disposal is to locate and lock-down. This is expensive, with estimated cost in the Billions, but considering that in the Iraq war we spent a Billion every three days this is cheap! When no funds were available to purchase highly enriched uranium from Yugoslavia, Ted Turner came up with five million of his own and successfully took it out of commission. Our government has done its share in reducing the available supply. Did you know that 20% of our nuclear power today is fueled with recycled Soviet nuke fuel? Getting the stuff off the street is our number one priority.

 

Building a “clean” nuclear device is complex and requires huge governmental resources; only rogue nations like North Korea and Iran can divert such funds. Contrary to belief, such a device is compact and can fit into a suitcase! (All the Plutonium used in the first atomic bomb in 1944 could fit into a one gallon Milk jug!)…. In military jargon this is called: Lo probability – High Consequences.

 

Col. Larsen's introduction to the two issues at hand

Our government is not immune to the issue...here Col. Larsen is reading a quote by President Obama made in 2009

A dirty Bomb is different: Hi Probability – Low Consequences is our real threat. Any nuclear waste material will do. Spent reactor stuff, medical x-ray materials can be trawled from hundreds of locations around the world. A dirty bomb can be concealed in a minivan or the station wagon used by the Times Square Bomber. It will kill hundreds of people, not the millions in a sophisticated attack! However gruesome such an attack would be, by comparison, more people die on the roads each weekend than would die in this disaster. The real bi-product will be quelling national hysteria. This is what the enemy wants…. To forestall this, we must be prepared with good preventative planning.

 

Col. Larsen assured us that there is an up side to this horrid picture. Radiation is dissipated in a very short time. Seven hours after an explosion 90% will have evaporated. In two days 99% is gone. If you are lucky enough to have lived through the first impact, you have a very good chance of survival, PROVIDING you take the necessary precautions. (The bomb-shelters of the 60’s were the right stuff.) The hysteria instinct of getting into your car and driving off is wrong. Stay put. There are measures you can take to prepare your home for a disaster…. go to your basement…get lots of concrete and earth between you and the outside. If a basement is not the option, be certain that your windows are airtight. A good survival kit is a basic requisite… every home should have one. Its contents are logical and simple: (See list below) There is an excellent video available on preventing nuke terror…go to the Internet, to nti.org

 

Dave McIntyre briefing us on the threat of WMD, both nuclear and bio

Having read the riot act on nuclear, Col. Larsen switched to biological warfare; this is easier, more transportable and deadly. Col. Larsen startled the meeting by pulling a small plastic vile out of his coat pocket….”This is all it takes to smuggle three microns of bacterial contaminants into your back yard!”…. He carried the same vile into a secured Senate meeting on Homeland Security, passing numerous checkpoints unchallenged. When he asked the Senators if they had ever seen a bio-material Bomb…their answer was NO. Their reaction was audible when he pulled the demo out of his pocket…. Our awareness of this Bio risk has been so low that it goes virtually undetected. The suicide pilot, who flew his plane into the Pentagon on 9/11 had been treated for Anthrax burns 10 months earlier in a American hospital! Apparently, even then Al Qaeda was considering Bio versus their fatal flights.

The program shifted to our second speaker: Dave McIntyre, a professional military man, with a long-time record in Homeland Security. Speaking of lack of funds, he pointed to the fact that there is more financial support allotted to the Marine Corp Band than there is to biological clean-up prevention!

 

The day after 9/11 Ted Kennedy called a bi-partisan meeting to evaluate the new threats against us. It was concluded that Bio warfare was high on the list. A year later, we had the Anthrax attacks! This tragedy killed five postal workers and a Connecticut woman, inadvertently exposed through mail contamination. This “terror” attack was never resolved. There were two suspects: both working in a government lab…. one sued for false accusations and harassment, was cleared and subsequently won a lawsuit for three a half million dollars…the other committed suicide. Much has been written about this strange case…One of the suppositions was that these letters were not intended to kill but rather planned as a graphic heads-up that this could happen on a broader scale…Missing from this hypothesis was an understanding of anthrax’s ability to leach through paper and the deadly nature of it’s delayed reaction.

 

Dr. Craig Vanderwagen explaining the serious risks of an anthrax attack

Dr. Craig Vanderwagen, weighed in on the subject and added more details on the danger of anthrax… It is treatable with Doxycyline (an antibiotic) if administered early enough, but there was no national supply…. symptoms take days to develop and unlike radioactive contamination, take years to disperse. (The British experimented with an anthrax bomb at the beginning of World War II…the tests were conducted on a remote Scottish island and took over 40 years to clean-up!) There is no funding in any governmental budget to deal with an environmental clean up of this magnitude. It is this danger that has led to the conclusion that Public Health is as important a priority as the Military…(and they were not referring to Obama’s Health Care Bill.) We’re not talking about a man on the moon project; we are talking about our public’s health and survival.

Vastly lagging in its appraisal technology, the FDA has barely attacked diagnostic and pre-clinical detection and bio-shield products. Had aspirin or penicillin been invented today, it would not have passed FDA approval! There is no incentive to develop these products. Pharmaceutical companies are “for profit organizations” and there is no profit in developing and stockpiling Bio Shield vaccines. The technology for creating vaccines is well over 50 years old and still is using an egg to produce each dose. To bring this science into the 21^st Century, the expertise is there for change, but the incentive isn’t! Far too little government spending is earmarked for this investment…. Both SIGA and  CBLI, have been at the forefront of developing the 21^st Century technology needed for our protection. Their science is helping to explore other forms of treatments for virus and cancer. (Unfortunately, in today’s climate of budget cutting…let us hope these will not be among the first to go!) This should be a high priority bi-partisan issue not shelved for budgetary reasons.

 

Our National Alert Systems are out of whack. In an attack, the disaster becomes a regional issue: State-by-State, community-by-community. If we are not prepared at the local level, the government can do little to alleviate the disaster. Our States and communities have zero funding for this.

 

A survey recently conducted in our best universities, concluded that the largest number of grads in the sciences were Physicists, and the least were Microbiologists. Either way, these top grads didn’t stay in America; they were offered lucrative job opportunities in distant places like Singapore with attractive perks. Many of them took up the offers. We are loosing hundred of these skilled advance degree graduates in this manner…not to speak of the thousands of foreign student training in our universities and who are not invited to practice their skill in our country. Our Homeland Defense industry is shrinking for lack of research and financial support. It was recommended by this team that a Billion dollars should be allocated for better security: 1/3^rd going to the Federal Government, 1/3^rd to States and 1/3^rd to communities at high risk. States today with their strapped finances, allocate nothing! The problem is fund distribution…with the government’s clumsy bureaucracy; it will be squandered in political rivalry.

 

Dr. Akhila Kosaraju enlightening us on our lagging research programs

Dr. Akhila Kosaraju filled us in on the private sector’s struggle to do pure research in the biomedical field. Her company, SIGA Technologies, based in New York, has specialized in developing pharmaceutical agents to fight some of the most lethal potential biowarfare pathogens.  SIGA’s lead agent is a drug to counter smallpox – this deadly disease was effectively eradicated some years ago. Non-the-less, it looms as a major Bio-warfare threat today. Her company’s research is focused on preventative vaccines…it is largely financed through government grants as research of this kind, has little profit incentive for private investors. Dr. Kosaraju is a knowledgeable advocate and a great spokesperson for her cause.

 

At the conclusion of this amazing indoctrination session, Col. Larsen was asked the inevitable question,  “How can you sleep at night, knowing all this stuff?” his retort: “I sleep just like a baby….. waking up every three hours screaming!”

 

 

 

Preparedness: The basics for survival

 

The primary threat to a community may come from natural disasters.

The second would be a terror attack using WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) either nuclear or bio. Remember that a localized disaster would have repercussions well beyond the area immediately affected.

FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is responsible for disaster management. However, here are some useful facts you should know:

 

Myth In a major disaster, the federal government will lead response efforts.

Fact            You and your community will likely be on your own for 24 to 72 hours after a large-scale disaster, perhaps longer. Those first days are the most important for survival and recovery.

Myth  First responders in your community will provide aid and assistance.

Fact         In a large-scale disaster, most people are rescued and cared for by neighbors and citizens at the scene.

 

Readiness Kit

What you need for survival

 

• 14-day supply of prescription medicines
• Medical records
• 3-4 day supply of nonperishable food, can opener if kit contains canned food
• Bottled water – 1 gallon of water per person per day for at least three days – for drinking and sanitation
• Dust surgical mask (N-95), plastic sheeting and duct tape to shelter in place
• Pet supplies
• Cash, coins, traveler’s checks
• Important documents
• First aid kit, manual and thermometer
• Whistle to signal for help
• Flashlights and batteries
• Battery powered or hand-crank radio
• Cell phone with chargers, including car charger
• Trash bags, paper towels and toilet paper, soap, moist towelettes, ties for personal sanitation
•  Feminine supplies
• Aspirin or non-aspirin pain relieve
• Anti-diarrhea medication
• Contact lenses and supplies
• Tool Kit including wrench or pliers to turn off utilities
• Cell phone chargers & phone cards
• Matches in waterproof container
• Walking shoes
• Local maps
• Don’t forget the scotch and cookies!

For information on The Coudert Institute and future programs, go to www.coudertinstitute.com