I had my first experience with the millimeter wave detection machine at the airport this morning. I don’t think it caused any permanent damage but they did say that my right front pocket was a hit. So, the nice man with the soft hands patted down my pocket and found nothing.

Then, it occurred to me that my right front pocket is where I always keep my iPhone. So, I can only surmise that my iPhone has turned the top of my right thigh into a bomb that I can only control with an app from the App Store.

Luckily, the app is only 99 cents.

There was a considerable amount of garbage that I came across, but one CD and one song in particular has stuck with me in the years hence. “Me Climb Mountain” by Harvester is the album discovery I made one summer day in that window. The band has seemingly been lost to time. The only remains online being a few used copies of the CD in a few shops and maybe a wisp of a record review here and there. You can buy it used from Amazon for as little as a penny.

But I want to share a particular song that got me through some dark times in that wonderful city. The slow build of “It’s Been a Long Day” propels what appears to be a dark story but what feels like rage and bewilderment that finally finds release. Enjoy.

Tonight, I wanted to purchase Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker after seeing Penn Jillette’s strong recommendation about it being “life-changing.” So, off to Amazon I go and search for the title. This is the result I get:

Notice the pricing differences between the versions.

You can see that I can have the hardcover version delivered to my house in 2 days or less for 99 cents less than the Kindle version can be delivered over the Internet to my Kindle. In what universe does this possibly make sense? Am I really to believe that the cost of printing the book, delivering it to the Amazon warehouse, then delivering to me is somehow a negative number such that the content is worth $12.99? Am I supposed to effectively pay a premium for using a more eco-friendly, faster, and safer technology to read this content? How can this be good for the growth of the Kindle market when it’s still possible to sell physical goods for less than their digital counterparts?

The music industry discovered pretty quickly that charging slightly less than the physical good, either by lowering the price of the digital album or increasing the price of the physical made folks more likely to pay for something they could easily steal. It’s not quite as easy to steal ebooks for the average consumer, but it’s pricing crap like this that confuses people.

I’ll reiterate my idea that the best transitional pricing model is one where I pay for the physical item at prices at or just below current prices and then charge around a $3 surcharge to download the digital version immediately. I find it shocking that Amazon isn’t at least testing this pricing model. I also find it shocking that they are completely deaf to suggestions like this and don’t seem to be actively polling their user base as to what they might want.

NPR’s Best Album Covers of 2010

NPR’s Favorite Music of 2010

NPR Listeners’ Best Music of the Year

Paste Magazine’s 50 Best Albums of the Decade

Amazon’s Best Music of 2010

EW.com’s Best Albums of 2010

EW.com’s Best Movies of 2010

EW.com’s Best Books of 2010

EW.com’s Best TV Series of 2010

The third line of the creed is:

To Serve in the Light of Truth

We’ll break this down as we have the others.

To Serve

When one hears the word serve, its initial impact probably says a lot about one’s cultural background. If you grew up in a military family, or are yourself in the military, “to serve” is almost certainly going to mean being in one of the armed services. If you grew up in the American South, your mind might drift to thoughts of slavery and the Civil War. Perhaps you were a flower child of the 60s and so serving is wrapped in thoughts of helping a community be its best.

While I’ve carefully avoided unpacking the religious, specifically Christian, connotations of the other parts of the creed, mostly because I think they’re obvious and not all that interesting, this one phrase hangs heavily in my mind as it relates the idea of serving the Lord, Yahweh, God, etc. However, in this case, I’m at a loss for a better example than the humility and devotion that this phrase echoes loudly from the call that many answer to become followers of Jesus. That sublimation of the self to a greater good is what seems so compelling to me and why I’m willing to concede the religious example here.

That said, I do not consider service to be some act of self-effacement or docility that the sheep and shepherd analogy might engender. It is just as active and participatory as the previous verbs of the creed: believe and walk. It demands action and energy along with a responsibility to that which you serve. This is then a duty (fits well with the armed services connotation). It’s also a burden, but one we choose to take on (unlike the slavery connotation). Additionally, it’s chance to connect with a broader truth (as in the flower power connotation).

So, we have a burdensome duty which creates connections to the rest of humanity. This then is service.

The Light of Truth

The light of truth is that turn of phrase that makes unpacking our amazing language fun. At the same time that this phrase clearly evokes the idea that truth is that thing which brushes away the darkness of our being like turning on the lights in some fifth floor walkup in the East Village and watching the roaches scatter, it also shows truth to be a beacon toward which we turn when the seas are rough. Another reading might have us see the truth bearing the weight of our service thereby lightening the burden and making it more fulfilling.

Much has been written about Truth with a capital T. How do we define truth? Can the world exist if we always told the truth (greatly explored in the recent film The Invention of Lying)? Does the truth indeed set you free? I certainly don’t have those answers. In the context in which this creed lives, truth could be as simple as the honesty shared between brothers of the fraternity. It could be that thing which means we don’t have to lock the bedrooms in the fraternity house. I wouldn’t be writing this blog post if that was it though.

Truth and the light it brings as it relates to service has to about being that beacon to which people look and say, “That guy is doing it right.” It’s about being an example of what can be good and right about our modern society. Sure, everyone has a different structure for what good and right mean, but some core part of us knows when someone is on the right path and instinctually we won’t to follow them. This part of the creed echoes the desire of the fraternity to help build people like that.

I work with a guy who always strikes me as doing things right. He has a beautiful happy family, is creative and ambitious in his job, treats the people around him the way they want to be treated, and radiates a sense of rightness. That’s the truth that I think most of us don’t mind agreeing on. It gives us energy like a sun straightening a wilted sunflower. It provides a model for us to strive towards and it opens up the possibility that at some point, we might all serve each other in the same way.

The second line of the creed is:

To Walk in the Way of Honor

We’ll break down this line in a similar fashion to the first line of the creed.

To Walk

Walking is the quintessential action verb. It’s the original form of locomotion. It’s a way to get from one place to another. The connotation of a journey is wrapped up in the notion of walking. Of course, a journey, in fictional, fantastical terms, often has trials and tribulations. That’s the kind of walk we’re talking about here. It’s one that becomes a challenge and will find detractors along the way undermining one’s forward progress.

Walking is often something we do with one or more other people. There’s a group aspect around sharing one of these journeys. We sometimes need help. We need motivation and companionship. We need the shared experience that makes our journey easier when it might be fraught with roadblocks. It’s the not just the strength we find in numbers that has value here, it’s the strength found in shared experience.

The value of a shared experience is a somewhat obvious part of our existence, but I find it’s taken for granted. In a world where we pretend that interactions like “poking” each other asynchronously across thousands of miles constitutes a shared experience, the true value of facing down tribulation and finding success has been diminished.

The Way of Honor

There are at least two connotations to the word “way.” It could be the method by which one completes some task, as in, “That’s the way you hammer a nail.” But the connotation that’s stronger here is that of the path of one’s journey. It provides direction to the walking I’ve described above. It strengthens that communal nature of the journey we’re on by dictating a single point to which we are all hurtling.

This kind of way also includes something that is prescribed or previously conquered. There’s typically someone who has done this before and we’re following their lead in order to grasp that shared experience. That is, there’s a prescribed way to make our way along the way, if you will. We’re also looking to ensure that the way is open for those who come after. We are challenged to improve upon the way as we pass by. At the very least, our duty is to ensure the way isn’t harmed or threatened by our passage. This whole sense of way is about brotherhood in the face of doing something that’s difficult. That difficulty is honor.

Much has been written about the meaning behind honor. With unpopular wars being fought in two countries, the word honor has gotten a lot of usage lately. Often, the word is tossed around with same flippancy as hero. That’s unfortunate because true honor often transcends the notion of hero. Honor is what heroes do when no one is looking. It’s a calling to that code that exists between human beings and especially between brothers that is wholly selfless and transcends the people involved. Honor speaks to that compulsion we, as humans, have to do better than we’ve ever done before. It’s that constant striving to do away with our more petty nature to approach altruism or sacrifice.

One question left unanswered is that if honor is an ideal, can we truly ever be honorable? The creed prescribes that following the path toward honor that our brothers have hopefully made easier for us and clearing the wilderness we find at the end to make a bit easier for those who follow is how we come closest to honor.

Coming to the third part, we’ll examine the phrase, “To serve in the light of truth.”

The short version we recited was this:

To believe in the life of Love,

To walk in the way of Honor,

To serve in the light of Truth.

At the time, those words were just that, words. Something I had to memorize and recite without mistake. The content and value of those words has taken a long time to set in. I’m just now discovering what they might mean and more, what they might mean to me. I’ll take a series of blog posts to unpack and discuss each line.

At the onset of this series, let me say that I am not religious, but it’s clear that this creed was written from a strong Judeo-Christian viewpoint. Much of what I’ll discuss touches on these themes, but for me, these themes are much more universal than the variations or similarities between religions of the world. I see them as core to the human condition and will examine them in this way.

To Believe

The verb form of “belief” shares many of the powerful connotations of the noun form. Belief implies a faith that thrives without external proof and sometimes in spite of proof to the contrary. In the face of all that seeks otherwise, belief entreaties us to continue, to press on with that which we hold dear or without reproach. The act of believing is a selfless act which requires us to put that very belief at risk each time we profess it. We put that belief out into the world and hope that it comes back stronger each time.

I’m not religious at all, but I understand the power and draw of believing in something. Whether it’s believing in the person next you, or believing in yourself, the act of faith inherent in believing is beautiful. Much has been written about the mystery of faith, but I contend that believing in anything connects us as humans. Be that a god of your choosing or simply the god in the web of interactivity we create each day as we pass through life, belief that that thing makes you better is powerful and moving.

A Life of Love

This construction uses the word life to mean the living of a life. That is, the work of an entire life and the moments within that life are dedicated to object of the prepositional phrase that follows. Each action and each word services “love.” This is a high call for most of us and we’re clearly not talking about romantic love here. The creed asks us to love everything we encounter in life. We are to embrace, support, and champion all that we encounter. In that way, it sees love as the antidote for any evil we might experience. We need only share that love and the life that brought us to it with any and all that we face. The force of that open and honest life might just tear down that which seeks to block our path.

Love ‘s only value is not in the passive example it might set. It also needs to be an active event that shows its value by impressing upon those who experience it the breadth and depth of connectedness that love creates. That is, within the loving moment, pathways to the rest of humanity are opened that provide insight, comfort, ingenuity, and contentedness. Love, then, can be that impetus for creativity and joy, breakthrough and collaboration.

Add the power of belief to this life dedicated to love and the result is a guiding tenet that prescribes an accepting and transformative approach to the world.

In the second part, we examine the phrase, “To walk in the way of honor.”

I found myself spending inordinate amounts of time in voyeuristic mining of the information found on these various sites. I was not participating, but merely consuming. That consumption put at risk the other intellectual pursuits I find myself drawn to. The poor state of this blog is but a small indication of the lack of reading, writing, and thinking I’ve been doing.

Yes, this blog is some part of the “social web,” but I’m hoping that a renewed focus to writing on this blog and the consequential attention that requires to the subjects it covers are the result of this effort. I find that my programming, critical reading, and writing skills have begun to atrophy. “Social networking” is not the only cause. A one-year old son, a new house, and increased responsibilities at work are all factors, but the easiest one of those to curtail is clear.

I recognize that writing about writing on your blog is the height of arrogance. My goal for this post is that it serve as some signpost in my personal noosphere of when a shift was made, intentionally and with passion.

I just priced Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire and noticed that the hardcover edition shipped to me in two days is $10.50, while the Kindle edition is $8.40 and would be here within the minute. Am I to believe that printing, binding, and shipping a hardcover book only costs $2.10? Surely, the fixed costs of the hardcover edition are much higher than that. I understand that there are server costs, power costs, development costs, maintenance costs, and the like, but these are incremental costs when it comes down to an individual Kindle book. This makes me wonder what the algorithm is behind the Kindle pricing. Then, I realize it doesn’t matter.

I want a physical copy of the book. I’m just that sort of reader/collector that I need to have a tactile experience. However, if I were given the choice of paying the $10.50 for the hardcover version of Larsson’s novel and adding an additional $3.00 to receive a Kindle version immediately, I’d pay that extra $3.00 for every book I buy. Every single one. So, now, you’ve turned me into a profit center, where before, I’m not even going to contemplate the Kindle edition.

What about those folks who don’t want the printed version? Let them pay a little more. $8.40 seems high but something in the 30-40% of the current hardcover cost seems like a great compromise. That way, they pay a little less than the current price, but pay more than those of us from whom you’re making money on by way of the print editions.

This model has been working in the technology book space for quite some time. You can often buy a PDF of the book for something like 50% of the printed edition price. If you buy them together, you get a break on the digital and printed price points. The Pragmatic Bookshelf has built their entire business on this successful model.

So, please consider the “buy it in print and get a digital version” style of pricing for all of your Kindle editions. Please don’t bother me with whining about licensing. You’re the largest bookseller in the world. Why would you even listen to someone trying to talk to you about licensing? This new pricing model would instantly make me a Kindle buyer and devotee.

Sincerely,
Alex Ezell

Next weekend, I’ll be headed back to Athens to see the Grand Opening of the new Chateau of the Sigma Nu fraternity house. I was the last person to live in that house back in 1996. There has been no real fraternity house for 13 years. It will be amazing to see it come back to life. I’ll miss the old house a great deal. There are literally hundreds of stories to be told about the place. This new house, then, will need some time to develop it’s own aura. Hopefully, the guys won’t destroy the thing in the first year, but really, if I was there, I’d probably be throwing up in a toilet on night one. Because that’s what my college experience was about in the majority.

I’m going to take it back even further come the end of September. I’ll be traveling back to Rome, GA for my 15-year high school reunion at Darlington School. I can’t wait to see some old friends and meet their wives and children. I can’t wait for them to meet my son, too. It’s going to be odd because I was just working/teaching there only 3 years ago. Many of my colleagues, who were my teachers to begin with, will be there and its odd to connect with them on such different levels. As a student, they knew me in a certain way. As a colleague, they knew me in quite a different way. Of course, that goes for my impressions of and experiences with them as well.

All this will be happening as the fall descends around me. Fall always make me think back to times like the start of football season in Athens and the first days of high school, meeting all the new people and adjusting to new roommates and such. Clearly, I’ve already begun my mind trips back in time.