If Vice Be A Virtue

William Blake said quite rightly, “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”

It is true that the most creative minds throughout history have often been quite "different".  Certainly, in our own age we have myriad examples of artists, musicians and performers who have lived lives of excess, yet left legacies of work that transcends time and place, even when the excess led to their untimely deaths.

Peter O'Toole did not only take the road of excess, he often took more than one lane.  He was well know on and off camera for his drinking and frolicking.  In fact, he was one of a class of British actors that included Richard Burton and Oliver Reed, who were as famous for their acting talents as their antics with bottle in one hand and script in the other.

Though no one can deny the gravitas of Burton, nor the aristocratic nature of Reed, there was a playfulness and Everyman appeal about O'Toole, perhaps his Irish soul.  His reputation, and his reported behavior, was not unlike the character he played in My Favorite Year, yet he could bring such depth and passion as Henry II, in The Lion in Winter.  Even in a production so horribly conceived and executed as Bob Guccioni's Caligula, O'Toole's Tiberius stands out as a singular rendition of the Roman emperor.

Only O'Toole could pull off both regal and mundane characters, and give emperors a human quality, while giving a thief a regal spirit in How to Steal a Million, nearly outshining Audrey Hepburn.  Whether he starred in massive epics like Lawrence of Arabia, or quiet tear-jerkers like Lucy, the camera gravitated to O'Toole.  His almost feminine features and blonde hair covered a soul that was pure child battling maturity.  Each of these facets he could isolate and bring to the fore to create three-dimensional characters that completely inhabited whatever space they were given.  He could fondle a meaningless set piece and it suddenly would be infused with some secret history that the audience could only guess at.

Though I regrettably never met O'Toole, I did get to see him in Pygmalion on Broadway in the 80s.  His Henry Higgins was positively whacked, which turned out to be influenced by heavy use of cocaine, but he turned even that into a character that was both haunting and disturbing...an entirely new read of the famous Shaw play that seems even more poignant as we enter the Age of Transhumanism.

Like most artists who create transcendent work, I don't think O'Toole ever set out to do it.  He was happy to make enough money to support his lavish lifestyle of self-indulgence.  In the process, though, he did what all great actors do: he hid most intimate self by placing parts of it on glorious display in his work.  We, the audience, though he had only created "characters", when in fact he was confessing to us.  In the process, we recognized that what was on the screen and stage was something truly unique, even if we didn't recognize the depth of it.

Since O'Toole's death, hardly untimely in the last week, some have argued that without his propensity for excess, the world might have received so much more.  I argue that without the vice, might we have received anything at all?  Can we separate Jimi Hendrix or Gerry Garcia from heroin, or Sir Arthur Conan Doye from 7% solution?    How about William Burroughs, Marilyn Monroe, or indeed, Richard Burton?  How much of their talent was released by, or stifled by excess?

If vice be a virtue for some, then who are we to say no?

For some, creativity comes from scarcity, but for others it comes through lavish excess.  I don't concern myself with what we might have gotten.  It is enough that we have a body of performances, such as O'Toole's, at all.  I'll take The Night of the Generals over Steven Spielburg's finest effort any day.  I don't care if the entire cast was sotted and mainlining, watching the chemistry between O'Toole, Sharif and Courtenay is magic.

Bartender!  Another round...

 

L'art Pour L'art

What is art?

Related to that, what is creativity?  Few people stop to think about these things in their daily lives, though we are surrounded by things called art nearly every moment of every day.  Many large cities have public art on display.  Counties maintain museums to display art.  Some people call TeeVee, movies and pop music art.  There is no lack of folks around that call themselves artists.  But what is it?

Can we be objective about art?  People commonly say that art is in the eye of the beholder.  One man's trash is another man's treasure.  Art is a statement that provokes emotion and even fistfights.  But is all that really art?

Robert Mapplethorpe's Pisschrist at one time was the center of tremendous controversy, with pickets and heated public debate over its merits.  It was defended as art on the grounds that it was self-expression.

Andy Warhol became famous for taking pop culture icons and removing them from context to show them in isolation.  Who can forget the Campbell's soup can or the Marilyn Monroe four-panel?  Are they art?

Are the works of Steven Spielberg or The Beatles art?  In fact, are any movies, commonly called a collaborative art form, definable as art?

The central problem here is whether we can measure art objectively.  Everyone has a favorite movie, book, painting, or song.  They can be very moving and meaningful to us and evoke strong memories and emotions when we encounter them.  However, the smell of frying bacon does the same thing for me.  Does that make cooking bacon an art form?

I submit that creativity and art are two very distinct things, and that just because something elicits strong emotions does not make it art, but simply a memory trigger.  Art is not necessarily emotional, though art can bring forth emotions.  Creativity is not art, though art is creative.  How does this work?

Well, one can do something creative that is not art.  Mapplethorpe's Pisschrist is creative.  I juxtaposes two things that no one in the public sphere had done before (mostly out of fear of being burned at the stake).  Placing a crucifix in a jar of urine was a creative act.  It took two objects that had never been combined before and did so in a way that provoked comment and emotion.  Some people thought it was sacrilege, other thought it was poignant.  Some felt compelled to look at it as a challenge to their personal paradigm, others felt compelled to cause damage and injury to prevent folks from looking at it.  But...it was not art.

Art is taking raw materials and, according to certain rigid rules, creating beauty by making the raw material conform to opposing rules.  Now that all sounds fine and dandy, but what does it mean?

Michelangelo's David took raw stone, and by the rules of symmetry, balance, rhythm, and context, converted the stone into flesh.  When one views the statue up close, one can see the ripples of sinew, the veins, the pensive look in the eyes.  The stone was forced to assume an unnatural state for the material.  The assumption was predicated on certain rules of 'beauty' that all people everywhere consider true and verifiable.  The pose of the subject creates the expectation of further motion and emotion, something which stone is not supposed to possess.  For that reason, the statue has endured for centuries as a treasure and work of art because it forces the natural (raw) to appear soft and flexible, while at the same time making flesh appear to be inflexible and eternal.

The artist not only accomplished an unusual juxtaposition in textures, but did so while creating a remarkably beautiful object.  Both in subjective and objective measures, the statue   The figure has perfect symmetry, is visually balanced, and the pose implies forward motion and thus rhythm.  Combined, these elements are the hallmark of true art.

By comparison, Mapplethorpe took two manufactured items - one produced by involuntary processes in his body and other by some manufacturer - and put them together without value added to either object.  The materials do not deny their basic natures and functions.  There is no rhythm, balance or created symmetry.  The crucifix is simple dunked in the urine in a more or less random manner.

While this might be considered a creative juxtaposition, it is not art.  It does not bear any of the hallmarks of subjective or objective measurements.  There is no beauty.  There is no modification of raw materials.  In fact, the only real labor involved was an involuntary body function requiring no conscious effort at all.

We can say this about much of pop culture.  Music is little more than organized chaos.  Most movies do not rise above being cuss fests and car crashes.  Even much of painting and sculpture can not be considered art.

One key factor of art is the hardest to judge because it takes a lot of time, and that is that art must withstand the test of time.  True art rises above contemporary fashions and trends.  It is as fresh at this moment as it was 400 years ago.

Art also exists above culture and, in fact, creates culture.  A work of art from any place and time can be appreciated in any other place and time.  The works of da Vinci, Mozart or the creators of King Tut's funerary pieces have fascinated and enthralled audiences across time and space.  You do not need to be Egyptian, nor even know anything about Tut's culture to marvel at the incredible workmanship and beauty of the art.

I find it hard to believe that the works of Jackson Pollock or Roy Lichtenstein will survive this century as anything but curiosities.  Some of The Beatles' music has withstood a half century and is greatly enjoyed on every continent.  It may well be that we could apply the term 'art' to some of their work, particularly that of John Lennon and George Harrison.

As for Steven Spielberg, the only thing artful about his work is the amazing way he has risen to the top of the movie world.   In 20 years, I would be surprised if anyone remembers who he was or what he did.  For that matter, after nearly a century of Academy Awards, how many Best Pictures can you name?  If you can think of two or three then there's a job as a film historian waiting for you.

Art never causes revulsion.  Things done for shock value can not be art.  Art does not shock.  It is elevating and inspiring.  It is timeless and exists outside the culture in which it is created.  Real art has no need to be anything but itself.

And can we please stop calling those brainless, clueless bucketheads in the recording industry "artists"?  At least in the movie and TeeVee industry, they call the actors "talent" and not "artists".

When it comes to art, at least there is one thing we can all agree on: Life on the Far Side is high art!

Caught In The 'Net

A few readers were struck by the idea of money/anti-money in yesterday's "But Seriously, Folks..." diatribe.  Enough so, that they were moved to write in.  Looks like we'll have to develop that concept in upcoming posts and show the link between physics and economics that a number of high-powered thinks have hit upon, including Joseph Farrell, whose book "Babylon's Banksters" is a damn fine read.

One of our long-time readers and correspondents in Thailand followed up his comments with this:

Hello again, Bernard --
Your thoughts on this topic would be most valuable:
What happens if no Internet?
Mike Adams, in Austin, Texas, publishes a high-falutin web site,
"Natural News".
In a post today he writes:
"You can expect websites like NaturalNews.com ... and many others to be
seized by the government following a declaration of Martial Law. The
purpose of this is to prevent people from asking questions or being
informed. ... Natural News is right now working on an "information
underground railroad" technology that can allow readers to stay in touch
with us without using websites, browsers or email."
URL: http://www.naturalnews.com/038512_2013_predictions_insanity.html
Have you given any thought to what life out here will be like with no
Internet?

We thought that was an excellent question and well worth a few column inches to explore.

One thing I have learned in my travels across six continents is that banning things only makes it a little harder to get, but never impossible.  Here in Indonesia, a gun ban has done little to keep guns out of the hands of private individuals.  Of course, the price goes up, but if you want one bad enough, it's there for the taking.  In the US, even the talk of banning guns has sparked a frenzy of buying all across the country as folks scoop up what may become a difficult item to buy.

The short answer to our reader's question is this: if they ban the internet, the internet will go underground.

Now the long answer.

The internet grew out of the simple concept that linking two computers together was more powerful than either alone.  Also, data could be distributed so that memory could be more efficiently utilized, while still making the sum total available by giving addresses to individual files.

Back in the Dark Ages of the early 70s, when I was learning about computers in high school, you had to dial up another main frame, place the phone in a cradle modem and then you could use the resources of the other machine.  Most terminals were dumb, meaning that the machine in front of you had little or no computing power until it was linked with the main frame.

By the 1980s, I had an enormous, ugly IBM 8086 with monochrome monitor and dual 5.25" floppy drives.  My first modem was a 300 baud stone axe, but it allowed me to link to other computers.  At that time, the rage was something called a BBS (bulletin board service).  Everyone was scrambling to get a copy of Dana Wood's list of phone numbers for various BBSs, each run by someone called a "sysop".

Each BBS had their specialty.  Some were matchmakers, others for games, still others were exchanges for various hobbies and interests.  Each registered user had an address that allowed them to exchange mail with other users on the system.  Later, many of the BBSs would link up in the middle of the night and exchange mail with other remote systems allowing users to expand their contacts to other cities, and in some cases other countries.  Later still, they added live chat functions.

All of this was really amazing at the time.

In the Middle Ages of the 90s, I was working at a major hospital in the Houston Medical Center, were online networking was in its infancy, linking the various institutions of the center with each other.  Initially, we had to use various programs like Archie, Veronica, Fetch, and others.  Each did a specialized function, like search, read, etc.  Later, a program called Mozilla showed up that allowed a user to arrange files graphically and provided search and read functions built-in.  This program later became Netscape and was the first official browser. Over time, the browser took on more and more functionality, while designers tried to develop more aesthetically pleasing layouts for what became known as web pages.

So what does all of this have to do with the possible shut-down of the net?  Simple.

We know that if governments ban the internet, folks will find some way to subvert the ban.  Witness China, Saudi Arabia and other countries where the internet is severely limited.  There are plenty of people using a variety of means to get the banned information.  There are dozens of ways to 'spoof' and 'route' and slide past firewalls.  If there wasn't, WikiLeaks wouldn't have much to do.

As fast as the net was banned, a black market would spring up selling hardware and software that allowed buyers to create the links that have been lost.  Think of all the people who have private servers, and the many more who have vast libraries of information.  I've got one and a half terabytes of data stored right here, and there must be millions more like me.  I've even got some old BBS software that would allow me to set up my own dial-up service.

So what would happen if 'they' shut down the internet tomorrow?  Let's say 'they' only allow access to corporate media (propaganda) and corporate marketing sites.  How would people exchange information?

As soon as something like that scenario happened, people like me would set up old-style BBSs using landlines and clandestinely distributed phone numbers.  Eventually, the various BBSs would link up at set times to exchange email and data, say in the middle of the night.  It would be a hell of a lot slower and folks would probably stop sending trivial things like jokes around, but it would allow contact again with distant folks.

It would put ice water on instant and wide-ranging searches making it very hard to get information, but not impossible.  People would have to carefully consider their search strings to maximize effectiveness and networks of peer-to-peer links would eventually solidify into reliable info-gathering chains.  The most reliable links would eventually shake out and firm up.

OK, you think, but they also cut the phone service or limit what numbers you can access.  In this case, folks with Wi-Fi transmitters can easily modify them to set up discrete networks.  The range wouldn't be very far, but overlap would allow for expansion until entire regions could be linked via small home-based transmitters.

The limit on this sort of thing would be roving police thugs tracking down transmitters and confiscating them while imprisoning the operators.  At this point, lessons from underground movements during wartime would be appropriate.  Rotating schedules, detection ability and other work-arounds would be needed to prevent detection.  Also, spoofing transmitters would keep such enforcement busy tracking down useless links and mask real broadcasters.

Another way things would work is to have central link points that would send and receive information via shortwave, copy it to portable media (disks, USB drives, etc.) and distribute them to the owners.  Very risky, I think, but feasible.  And the technology to send data and images via shortwave is established if somewhat limited.  In a pinch, though, creative minds would solve a lot of issues rather quickly.  Never underestimate the Mother of Invention.

The next step in control is simply cut power.  This would be a radical step as it would alienate both sympathizers and radicals, which would be a bad move on the part of 'them'.  It would also severely limit 'their' capability to propagandize, which is a central tenet of fascist states.  TeeVee is one of the most wide-spread and effective mind-control devices ever invented and 'they' aren't likely to cut off their own nose to spite their face.  Also, electricity is central to their ability to offer creature comforts as a prime tool in placating the masses.

But let's suppose 'they' cut off the power.  Now we are back to hand presses and paper distribution.  In other words, a return to pamphleteering, which even as recent as the 1980s was a staple of underground communications.  I can remember going into underground bookstores all the way up to the 90s to buy banned information.  It isn't difficult to restart that sort of thing, and in many parts of the world they still have brisk operations.

The thing is, people communicate.  Throughout history, we have invented faster and broader means of communication with out far-flung relations.  Books, pamphlets, telegraph, wireless radio, internet, even strings pulled taut with paper cups on the ends, humans will find ways to communicate.  On tops of that, the genie is out of the bottle and it would be virtually impossible to put it back in.  Granted, things would slow down tremendously, but we have to keep in mind that the internet is just an extension of ancient communication techniques.  The real revolution is the digital storage medium.

I have built a considerable physical library over the decades, but the digital library I have amassed puts it to shame.  I have hundreds, if not thousands of e-books from Aristotle to Zemekis, movies, TeeVee shows, essays, how-to instructions, recipes, and letters I've sent over the past 30 years (I don't trust remote storage, so I save everything locally).  The beauty of multi-tasking is that I can be downloading dozens of documents while I read others.  And I know I'm not alone.

One of the best parables for the fascist age is Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.  You need to read this book.  In a future where books are banned, people become living books by memorizing them and transmitting them to others who want them.  It is the model for a post-internet world.  In an hour, I can copy a fairly good sampling of world history and literature to other disks and distribute it making 24 in a day, one at a time.

I learned a long time ago that information is the life-blood of civilization, and because of that, my idea of 'prepping' was to collect as much information, both in my head and on my drives, as I could amass.  People who store up food, water and such are only fighting half the battle.  The other half is storing culture and art.  Take a lesson from the wars and revolts of the past two decades.  What's the first thing people do?  The run to the museums and loot the art and culture: Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Greece, Spain, Syria, and on and on...they all have this one thing in common.  It's the reason that the Sphinx' nose sits in the Edward and Victoria museum in London, and not on the Sphinx.

From pony express to Gutenberg's press to runners, humans have always sought mass communications at the fastest possible speeds.  The internet is a major advance in the ability to transfer information, but it is the information itself which is the key.  Transmission has never been much of a problem, only content.  That we can store all of civilization on a couple of hard drives is the real wonder, and that is what everyone who worries about this problem should be focusing on.

My hard drive and CD collection may not rival the Library of Alexandria, but it would fill a wing quite nicely.  We should be putting our efforts into saving all the information we can.  Memory is cheap and readily available.  The means to transmit it is inconsequential by comparison.  If you want to get serious, print out your e-books on acid-free paper and store them in air-tight, fireproof safes.  Short of that, there's power in numbers.  If everyone takes the time to download a couple of great books or how-to manuals every day (no sweat to do right now), and stores them on good quality CDs or solid-state memory sticks, then the ability to distribute that information will take care of itself.

I see all the hand-wringing over the internet as a red herring.  The real battle is for the information it contains.  Never in history have so many had access to so much literature and culture so cheaply.  It is a great thing, but it is not the main focus.  We should be making personal efforts to save and pass on the information this tool allows us.  That is the real value.

By analogy, look at Egyptian hieroglyphics.  Until the 1800s, we were up to our eyeballs in pretty pictures and interesting scribblings.  In other words, we had plenty of transmission, but no content.  Then we found the Rosetta Stone.  Suddenly, those pretty pictures (transmission) started delivering mass amounts of content (information).  How we received the information was useless until we had the key to unlock the information stored inside.

We will always find ways to transmit information.  It is in our nature.  And one thing I've learned from living on a farm, and now in Indonesia, is that tools can be cobbled up out of chewing gum and bailing wire.  Creating something with the tool is the trick.  A hammer without a nail is pretty useless, in other words.

If you find content that you think is important enough, save it.  Save websites and books and articles and pictures.  Build yourself a library.  Take the time to collect the information that is important enough to pass on.  How you get it out to the world in a post-internet world is not important.  Once we invent a technology, it can not be uninvented.  All we can do is lose the reason to use it, and the reason is information.  The means will always be there.

It's like banning guns.  So what?  There's still a hundred different ways to kill at a distance.  Maybe not as efficient or far as a gun, but still bows and arrows, catapults, blow darts, and crossbows are pretty effective, if not a lot quieter.  Banning a tool does nothing to prevent the task at hand.

It's the task at hand that matters, and the internet is a tool for information.  Don't focus on the tool, focus on the reason for the tool.  You can ban speach, but you can't ban thought.  You can ban cars, but you can't ban movement.  You can ban houses, but you can't ban shelter.

Lately, I've been watching the old TeeVee series Hogan's Heroes on YouTube, not for the comedy, but for the creativity with which the characters approach problems.  Very good writing, by the way.  What it has reaffirmed for me is that the defining aspect of intelligence is creativity, and humans are nothing if not creative when they want to be.  We are tool-makers and will always make the tools we need to do the job.  The trick is having a job to do. 

On The Cusp

I was in Prague the year after the Velvet Revolution. I stood in front of the John Lennon wall and looked at all the rebuilding and cleaning up after decades of Soviet decay. The excitement was palpable and you could feel the energy of the nation as it surveyed the future and liked what it saw.

It was a heady time there and then, with bursts of creativity and limitless horizons. The arts exploded and a poet, Vaclav Havel, had taken the reigns of power. The dead wood had been cleared away, and now the garden could florish and the vital middle class would thrive.

I arrived in Indonesia ten years after the fall of Soeharto. It was a mean and ugly time back then. I have listened to first-hand accounts of fear and rage, stories of riots and looting. But the result has been another clearing of dead wood, and a great awakening of fresh blood and energy. Indonesia sees itself now standing at the threshold of global prominance, and likes what it sees.

There is a boom in the middle class here and a vital energy that infuses the culture. People are finding a new experience called self-determination and they are excited by its possibilities.

Imagine you live in the early 1900s in America. The nation is primarily rural and agricultural. There are pockets of electrified wonders and cars are a new and wonderous thing.

Now imagine that you leap-frog to the 1950s, where suddenly America stands at the head of nations as an economic powerhouse, with a vast and growing middle class full of vitality and creativity, yet struggling to hold on to conservative values and traditions.

If you can conjure that mental image and allow the feeling of that kind of sea-state change within your neighbors and society, then you can start to imagine what it feels like to be here now.

Leap-frog is fun and exciting, but there is an element of danger. Once you have catapulted into the air, you are committed to whatever vector you were on when you left the ground. It is extremely difficult to change direction once you are unbounded. Where you land is entirely dependent on where you took off, and should you realize new hazards mid-flight that were invisible when you leaped, you must decide quickly what must be done before making contact with the ground again.

Indonesia is at the precise moment when it had hit full stride, placed its hands on the hips of the 'frog,' and is just at the cusp of going into full flight. The country has one last, albeit brief, moment to adjust course before launching into the rare air of the world stage. Now is the moment to look ahead and see what other players have done, both right and wrong.

Indonesia is a unique case, in that it contains cultures of vastly differrent wants and needs. There are peoples here who literally span the course of human development, from just at the brink of Stone Age up to ultra-high tech virtual reality. All of these cultures are struggling to maintain their traditions while looking to join the properity that is infusing the country as a whole.

It is at this precise moment that Indonesia must look at where the previous players have landed, and decide whether it wishes to go that way, or adjust its vector.

Europe went the way of moral decay and spiritual disease, which has eaten its heart and left a hollow carcass. America went the way of unbridled greed and consumeristic self-absorption. The German and Soviet reichs collapsed under the weight of power-lust and overly centralized concentration of it.

Indonesia must ask itself what outcome it wants. It must look carefully at the global history of the West and of its immediate neighbor China. The people must steer a course between greed and me-too-ism, and outright political despotism. It must walk the delicate balance of regional autonomy and national interests.

If Indonesia allows the severe concentration of wealth and power that is found in America and Russia, then it will dissolve into a fascist oligarchy of control freaks. If it abandons its rich traditions and cultural heritage, then it will become another Europe without moral compass. And if it creates a society that chases things rather than ideas, then it will be at the mercy of those who dangle the things in front of them.

The ongoing Gayus case here illustrates perfectly Ovid's haunting admonition:

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?"

Who watches the watchers?

For those unfamiliar with the Gayus case, imagine Eliot Ness has just bagged the tax accountant of Al Capone. While the accountant is in protective custody awaiting trial, he is able to use his great resources to bribe Eliot to let him out on weekend furlogh to go meet Al in Atlantic City for gun and games before the legal proceedings begin.

Centralized government and corporate power can not and must not be trusted. The only authority able to judge what is best for the individual is the individual. If the individual cedes too much power and authority to others, then one day the individual will wake up and find he has no power and no authority. A profound distrust of other men and their institutions is healthy and necessary to prevent such abberations as Stalin, Hitler or the gross situation in America now.

As the Founders of the united States realized, power is best kept at the local and regional level, where it can be monitored and controlled. If it is allowed to leak into a central pool, it will someday drown you in your sleep.

Indonesia has placed its hands on the hips of the 'frog.' It is poised to leap into the air to experience the joy of boundless flight, like the garuda soaring on updrafts, effortlessly gliding over the land. But, the wise man remembers that even the garuda must land sometime, and having a clear idea of where that landing will be can mean the difference between success and miserable failure.

It is not enough to wish and dream. In Western culture, we speak of the ant and the grasshopper. The ant labors while the sun shines and builds its nest and reserves, so when the winter comes, it is ready. The grasshopper plays and doesn't have a care for what the future holds, and so when the snow comes, it dies.

Consider this:

When a pilot or sailor is preparing to let go of the ground, he makes a detailed plan, checks the weather reports, checks the charts for known obstacles, and has a firm idea of where he wants to go before slipping the surly gonds of Earth.

Now is the time for Indonesia to use its schools and institutions, not to parrot globalist propaganda, like warming and other rubbish, but to explore with a clear eye what has come before, and plot a course to avoid the graveyards of ships. That's not to say there won't be new hazards, but at least the known ones will be in focus.

It's an exciting time to live here. The future is wide open and Indonesia has the talent and the materials it needs to become a global economic player in its own right, not as the colony of some distant force. It must take care, adn the people must educate themselves, and not trust others to lead. Remember, if the outside world had done such a great job, why would the world be in such a mess now?

Indonesia must decide what it wants for itself, and that decision should enrich and empower all the people, not just a priviledged few. This country has been blessed with natual wealth and intuitive creativity. Use is wisely and carefully.

Leap-frog was one of my favorite games as a kid. We'd all spend hours playing it on a warm summer afternoon. But, I quickly learned that it was not just me who controlled my launch, but the 'frog' on whose back I broke free of Earth.

Do you trust your 'frog?'