be the change you want to see in the world

There are some interesting side effects coming out of the Summer of Code projects. It is often the case that the most useful and interesting functionality can come as a side effect of reaching another goal. Sometimes in order to build something you need to make a tool. The thing you build may or may not be great, but the tool itself becomes famous.

One of the real and growing advantages of Drupal is its ability to make content relate to other content. There are a number of node relation modules available, many of which are listed on the Best Related Links project page.

One of the Drupal Summer of Code programmers, Wolfgang Ziegler, recently posted a message to the development list about a module written as a side effect of his very interesting Node Profile project (project profile here). Node Profile will allow Drupal admins to create and make available a very detailed and diverse registration and profile path for users. By building a super profile out of multiple nodes, an admin will be able to provide a spectrum of views of user profile data. Also, users will be able to present themselves differently in different contexts, showing other users only the information that is relevant or appropriate in that context. These parts of a profile would be created as different nodes using different content types created using the excellent Content Construction Kit.

Presented with the technical challenges of showing information from multiple related nodes, and from multiple users, Ziegler has created Views Fusion. This module will allow the Views Module to leverage his own nodefamily node relations module (and others since it is written generically) and “melt” views together. The module currently requires a patch, so it isn’t really ready for mainstream use. It is definitely a module to watch if you want to extend your usage of Views.

British BM Tony Blair in Los Angeles yesterday:

He added, “Whatever the outward manifestation at any one time — in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Iraq, and add to that in Afghanistan, in Kashmir, in a host of other nations, including now some in Africa — this everywhere is a global fight about global values.

“It’s about modernization within Islam and out of it. It’s about whether our value system can be shown to be sufficiently robust, true, principled and appealing that it beats theirs.”

Tonight I wanted a treat for my sick family so I bought a bucket of Nestle Ice Cream. Kitkat ice cream. It was billed on the label as being “jam packed” with kitkat minis. I headed home and scooped a big bowl for myself. I found exactly three kitkat minis in my bowl. The flu has made me weak-minded.

Blair is right. Our value system does need to be sufficiently robust, true, principled and appealing. Let’s look at these criteria in reverse order through the lens of my bowl of kitkat ice cream.

Appealing. That’s easy. Western values look great on paper, just like the ice cream on the label of the bucket. The creamy goodness is wonderful and seductive. Riches abound, sexy people and fun, fun, fun.

Principled. I knew before swiping my Interac card that my Nestle product is a poor buy in the realm of principle. Nestle has a really bad reputation. One of their main lines is to substitute their palm oil-based baby formula for breastmilk around the world. In 2002 they were caught demanding millions from famine-stricken Ethiopia in a year where they posted 5.5B profit. The ice cream is lousy as well, with ingredients from beyond science fiction and nothing remotely resembling cream. And just three kitkat minis in a big bowl. Principles? To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, the Profit is the Principle.

True. The product was demonstrated above to be not true; to be inextricably wound up with lying as an inherent characteristic. Advertisers lie to us all the time. You might protest and point to the various watchdogs who will catch advertisers in a lie. Well, its like the old NHL. There were rules, but the traditional interpretation of them was so lax as to be meaningless. Let’s face it, the ice cream never looks like it does in the picture. Never. And yet, when this is pointed out to us we smirk sarcastically and utter the mantra of a beaten slave. Oh yeah, advertising. Who believes advertising? Somebody must believe it or the top ten multinational advertisers wouldn’t have spent a collective 25,000,000,000 dollars on advertising in 2002. That’s just ten companies.

Robust. Well, the ice cream is definitely robust. Big and in-your-face. But it is frankensteinian. It is a beast dressed up to look like what it is supposed to be. It isn’t ice cream. It is milk ingredients and modified milk ingredients and nineteen other things thoroughly and completely unrelated to ice cream. Imagine describing the ingredients of a democracy as: oligarchy ingredients, modified oligarchy ingredients, with a dash of totalitarianism, a pinch of fascism and selected other ideologies we are not required to disclose because of various bits of legislation our lobbyists and lawyers managed to ram through the back door of Parliament, (may contain traces of democracy). Robust indeed, but it is robust sow’s ear silk purse.

In this microcosmic analysis we see a fractal reflection of the macro-image of Western values viewed by those not yet sufficiently convinced by them. The challenge is a great one. It is not just one of convincing others that western values are better than radical Islam. It is also a job of making our own societies live up to our own values. If we aren’t willing to do that, why should anyone else believe it would be different in their neighborhhod when western values come to town?

So, who will be first to shout me down with a love it or leave it fascist slogan?

Sorry about the typo in the first line.