(Sex) object lessons.
Sunday, August 15th, 2004
“Blog, Interrupted”, April Witt’s Washington Post story on Jessica Cutler, the blog-and-tell intern. Somehow, this piece (which is just outstanding, I think) manages to address in one tidy package a lot of what I’ve been thinking about modern sexuality, the internet, slacker attitudes, feminist ideals filtered through a trashy pop culture, lessons on importance of looks versus what’s inside, what passes for power in Washington, and, uh, the all-too-frequent new-blogger incredulity: “you mean everyone can read what I just wrote?”
The lessons to be learned are myriad.
It’s long. It’s detailed. Read the whole thing while it’s there (how long do Washington Post pieces stay on their site?) Reflect. Repeat.
* * * * *
And while I’m in the linking-to-print-articles spirit, I commend to you:
Tom Shales of the WP on HBO’s edginess in general and Six Feet Under in particular–can you be too edgy?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63431-2004Aug13.html
The Post shamefully downplayed anti-war stories before the Iraq invasion…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58127-2004Aug11.html
Inside Al Queda’s hard drive–from the guy who bought it, in the Atlantic Monthly
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200409/cullison
So five minutes ago.
Sunday, August 8th, 2004
That’s one of those expressions (I saw it most recently in a Rolling Stone movie review) that really snaps into focus the level of my disconnect with our pop-culture filled world. It’s like Wired magazine’s “Wired/Tired/Expired”, in that what we’re supposed to be doing/reading/consuming/thinking about these days is that of the moment. It used to be simply “out” and “in”, as in “out of fashion” and “in fashion,” but right now the focal point of in-ness is razor-sharp and incredibly brief.
Amazing for a culture that is so largely cobbled together from recycled bits and samples of samples of creativity (yes, that was “samples of” twice.)
And from my perch way off the edge of what is “of the moment,” I just watched last year’s ‘American Splendor’ with great satisfaction. Pekar spent the last 30 years or so telling stories of ordinary life in a form and with a richness that makes weblogs seem positively one-dimensional. Couldn’t help but be reminded of my brother’s recent work that is very personal and a great use of the comic..er..graphic novel..er..whatever form. Also, the movie has Cleveland and White Castles in it, so, well, there you go.
* * * * *
Oh yeah, also learned on the web what ‘Guilloche’ means. Hint: not the same thing as huitlacoche.
Tilt.
Sunday, August 8th, 2004
I went to my brother’s favorite aggregated site this morning–Metafilter–and lo and behold:
…it wasn’t having a good Sunday morning. And I may be imagining it, but a lot more of the heavily-hit sites, from Slashdot to Google, have been having their no funcionar kind of moments lately.
And when they don’t show up, I ask myself “Okay, denial of service attack? Someone forgot to close a bracket? Power hit? Act of terror?”
It’s generally hard to tell. And generally, there isn’t an available explanation after they return to service.
And inasmuch as broadband internet is a utility in our house just like water and gas, it’s kind of like the ceiling fan switch in the living room doesn’t work for a moment, and then later, it does. Ghosts? Gremlins? Funny how we think about reliability and “always-on”-ness.
A few weeks ago, a powerful thunderstorm with lightning scored a direct hit on the uplink facilities for CNN and other Turner networks (2.8 miles due west of our house, by the way) and CNN’s audio feed to the satellite(s) was out for, I forget, 15 minutes or so. Amazingly, their ratings numbers held up–even beating MSNBC at that particular moment.
That interruption was big news, though, and reporters demanded a statement from CNN’s spokespeople. Hey, something blew. Happens all the time…or it used to, in the land of television. Now, with their multiply-redundant systems, it’s rare that the big networks just aren’t there…if something does fail, more often than not we suspect (and blame) the local cable companies, who do nothing to earn our trust by hiding behind voicemail trees and customer service people far removed from the folks who actually go out and reset the breakers and fire up the crashed servers.
We had a power hit at the house this morning, too…the kind of off, then on, then off, then on hit that really plays havoc with solid state equipment. Froze up my G5 solid and knocked Sammy’s machine off. Darn you, Georgia Power.
The Justice Department doesn’t want you to read.
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2004
Does this seem right to you? My sister sent this along, from the American Library Association via BuzzFlash:
Last week, the American Library Association learned that the Department of Justice asked the Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents to instruct depository libraries to destroy five publications the Department has deemed not “appropriate for external use.” The Department of Justice has called for these five these public documents, two of which are texts of federal statutes, to be removed from depository libraries and destroyed, making their content available only to those with access to a law office or law library.
The topics addressed in the named documents include information on how citizens can retrieve items that may have been confiscated by the government during an investigation. The documents to be removed and destroyed include: Civil and Criminal Forfeiture Procedure; Select Criminal Forfeiture Forms; Select Federal Asset Forfeiture Statutes; Asset forfeiture and money laundering resource directory; and Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (CAFRA).
ALA has submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the withdrawn materials in order to obtain an official response from the Department of Justice regarding this unusual action, and why the Department has requested that documents that have been available to the public for as long as four years be removed from depository library
collections. ALA is committed to ensuring that public documents remain available to the public and will do its best to bring about a satisfactory resolution of this matter.Librarians should note that, according to policy 72, written authorization from the Superintendent of Documents is required to remove any documents. To this date no such written authorization in hard copy has been issued.
I did a Google news check, and then wrote her back to say that it looks like the DOJ reversed its policy…but the point remains, that the ONLY hits that came up on this story out here in the land of Google (vs. lexisNexus) was from the Boston Globe reporting it–and then reporting the reversal.
Two hits. Did CNN report it? How many, if ANY broadcast outlets?
Yeah, it’s not as compelling as, say, a murder in Utah, or how big a bounce Kerry really got, but it is, after all how our civil liberties erode…one tiny bit at a time–and that’s a story that’s really really difficult to cover.
Plugs pulled.
Friday, July 23rd, 2004
This was a black friday for folks who worked at the Time Warner 24 hour newschannels in Houston and San Antonio. Employees walked in today to find they were all out of a job, and the channel was signing off immediately.
Immediately!
As the designer of the logos for both of those channels, and as designer of the animation and all the on-air components of News 24 Houston, I feel for the folks who worked hard there to make the channels work. Why don’t they work? It comes down to revenue–they didn’t sell enough advertising to support the costs of the operation.
I’m no expert on either ad sales or the business side of television operations, but I do know this: the old models don’t work, and there were a lot of people trying to impose old-style approaches to ad sales and technology on these operations. There really wasn’t much of a “smaller is better” approach in place, and the egos of the management people went for big and impressive spaces when small and efficient would have done just fine.
The facilities looked great. They spent too much for what ended up on the screen though.
Again, I salute the good people in the trenches.
Ted’s beef.
Wednesday, July 21st, 2004
Ted Turner, my old boss, has written about how goverment and business collaborate to create fewer media voices.
It’s the story of the news business over the last twenty years, and it’s somehow reassuring to hear it expressed out of the mouth of the guy who built up something worth absorbing (as Time Warner did) and who now promotes bison meat and does small things to better the world..while biding his time for the next opportunity.
The quirks and eccentricities of CNN and TBS’s Atlanta-based localism (now long gone) were to me a big part of what made them compelling channels to watch, whether you were in Alaska or Idaho or Ohio.
Unfooled.
Tuesday, June 29th, 2004
Here’s a fine, fine use of the internet, a scholarly examination of what happens when businesses move on and are replaced by other businesses and…well, just check it out.
I found it while looking around a great site that compares historic photos of Atlanta with the current reality. Thanks to brother James for that pointer.
Ticked off.
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2004
Hey, it’s for sale on Ebay, so it must be a real product!
ARE YOU TIRED OF THE ANNOYING NEWS TICKER BAR AT THE BOTTOM OF YOUR TV SCREEN? Block*it with the TVShield.* TVShield is space-age specially formulated film which quickly adheres to any TV set and can be removed at any time without damage to your TV screen so you can use it over and over again.
Somehow, I have to admire the entrepreneurial spirit behind selling $.03 worth of plastic to block the bottom of a TV screen that displays text generated by a device costing tens of thousands of dollars.
I’ve spent enough of my career now making these damn translucent bugs and logos that, hey, if I were given a newschannel to run, I’d eliminate the clutter and advertise it as ‘high definition television’, which, I guess is kinda what HBO does.
For the persistently annoyed viewer, I have two words: duct tape. Your picture tube damage may vary, of course.
Rights, yogurt, G5 speed, and space itself.
Friday, June 18th, 2004
…on a hot and humid Friday. Amazing, taken together, what’s important to me these days…
* * * * *
Cory Doctorow went to the heart of the beast today and gave an inspired speech on why Digital Rights management (DRM) is a Bad Thing.
* * * * *
Although we do an amazing amount of our shopping these days at Whole Foods, the folks at Sevananda do a fine job of keeping up with some key ingredients of our life, including the wonderful Nancy’s Yogurt, fresh from Oregon…or as fresh as any yogurt can be, having traveled cross-country. So for those of you scoring at home, we do a whole lotta Whole Foods, Sevananda for yogurt, the DeKalb Farmers Market for fresh vegetables a couple of times per month, and Kroger for Breyer’s chocolate ice cream, some frozen fruit, and selected canned vegetables.
* * * * *
Brother James got a new Mac G5 today, one of the fancy new dual processor aluminum jobbies, and it’s about time. He was especially impressed with Apple’s new migration tool that basically lets you hook up a FireWire cable between your old and new machines and all the important parts of your identity are shared, copied, and configured.
* * * * *
And finally, what are we going to do this weekend? Well, we have a birthday celebration to attend for Ms. Brigid on Sunday, but Monday, darn, if we lived on the west coast it’d be fun to head out to the desert, to the Mojave Airport to watch the landing of World’s first private manned space flight…Bert Rutan’s SpaceShip One. The MHV airport’s website already bills themselves (and it’s an official designation) as Americas First Inland Spaceport (this is something you have to be licensed for–who knew?), and the launch is a legitimately paradigm-busting moment. Wish I could be there.
* * * * *
Well, whether in the desert or under the muggy treescapes of Atlanta. drink lots of water and stay cool…
How much would you pay?
Monday, June 14th, 2004
I’d say about $4.95 per month. Yep. if HBO would let me download their own originated programs (like Six Feet Under, The Sopranos) at HDTV resolution/aspect (or a reasonable subsampling thereof) on demand, without any whacked out file protection like “the movie will only play for a week” or “let us put all this proprietary stuff on your machine.”
Why less than what they charge for the service on cable? Because I have to do a fair amount of work to get the thing in a viewable form–downloading and cobbling the file together, and then burning it on a DVD for playback or long-term storage.
This will, of course, not likely ever happen…they really don’t want people to have high-quality recordings of their product. But it’s Monday morning–care to guess how much bandwidth on the internet is being consumed by (illegal) downloads of HDTV recordings of last night’s Six Feet Under?
As far as I can tell, mucho.
Ah, and this is fresh as this morning’s NYT headlines (reg required) where they announce that Starz Encore group have teamed up with Real Networks to offer 100 downloadable movies for $12.95 per month. But, quoth the Times, “The Starz service uses technology from Real that allows the movies to be played only by a given subscriber and only within a certain time period. Each film will have an expiration date that coincides with its last showing on the cable station. The movies will be encoded so that they cannot be played after the expiration date.” Now, it’s not Starz and Real who are completely in the driver’s seat here when it comes to establishing these limitation–no, it’s the producting studios who set these “windows of opportunity,” and then are amazed when peopel try to subvert their plans so that they can watch this stuff when and how they want to.
Never a dull moment, watching the nature of broadcasting, film, cable, and entertainment itself change.
You can spec all you want, but…
Monday, June 14th, 2004
Andrei Herasimchuk, who annoys me to this day as the guy who added some things to the Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator user interfaces that just don’t make any damn sense (especially when trying to stretch a metaphor between two very different programs) nevertheless has some very cogent things to say about Why Web Standards are a Good Idea. The executive summary:
Generally speaking, standards are a means to apply pressure on corporations to behave in a manner that is beneficial to everyone, not just the shareholders of the corporation.
You can spec all you want, but if corporate “self”-interest sees more profit in a proprietary approach, standards will simply fade away, and the big corporate dog will set the approach.
Does that remind you of any particular mega corporation? Yeah, that one.
Rainy Sunday linkage.
Sunday, June 13th, 2004
Maybe ‘leakage’ too, although the gutters seem to be handling most of the downpour. Around midnight last night, even with the air conditioning on (modestly) upstairs, it was about 90 degrees last night, and stifling in our bedroom. Then the rains came down, and came down, and came down. Things were much cooler after that.
* * * * *
John Kerry played in a band. You’d like to hear their work on an MP3, right?
* * * * *
Rebecca, who seems resolutely anti-blog, mentioned this NYT Magazine article about Whole Foods (reg required) last night at Jim’s birthday dinner. So how is that functionally different than a blog entry? Oh, right. The whole world can’t read it. The guy who calls himself Robert X. Cringely has some thoughts on blogs that relate here.
* * * * *
What to find the latitude and longitude of your house–or anyone’s house–without a GPS? Some generous guy has written a Perl-powered site.
* * * * *
I spose that’s enough to tide you over; I’ve got to get back to more pressing issues, like converting Adam’s EPS into a PDF, helping Bernie install OS X on an ancient iMac, or consulting with Nancy to help her fix Comcast’s defective cable modem installation.
And maybe I’ll get to some work I’m paid for, too!
The pause that connects.
Thursday, June 10th, 2004
This is just plain sensible, which is why it’s kinda amazing that it comes from Texas: soon, pull into a rest area anywhere in the state, have free wireless access.
They’re correct to point out this is a huge boon to safety.
Give me (On) Liberty.
Thursday, June 10th, 2004
What happens if you post a freely-accessible, out-of-copyright work on the internet and then send phony copyright infingement notices to the ISPs who host the site? Oh, how about trampled-upon civil rights? The concept of ‘NTD’, or Notice and Take Down procedures are supposed to be a manifestation of the Internet’s self-censorship. Well, ‘self’ ain’t ‘self’ when it’s some mysterious managers at some ISP somewhere.
The final irony: the test post was John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty.
Honorable gentleman from Tennessee.
Wednesday, May 26th, 2004
I’m glad, proud, and content that I voted for Al Gore in 2000…even more so when I read these remarks by the former vice-president.
Thanks, Leslie, for pointing these out.
Dis/reconnects.
Wednesday, May 19th, 2004
We live in a world these days where most newscasts contain images that cause many to avert their eyes–acts of graphic violence carried out on human beings by other human beings. I go to the video store, to the grocery, out to lunch with friends, and an inevitable subject is: how messed up things are. How the out-of-control war and the secret Defense department programs that encourage torture and policies that alienate the rest of the world are making it hard to be very proud of our government.
I know some folks–some otherwise mild-mannered folks–who are talking seriously about leaving a country they love, because it isn’t the same place anymore.
And it seems to me like it’s this additional layer of stress that just sorta overlays everything we do. That can’t be good.
I get up in the morning and delete piles of spam from my mailbox and then go and find what words we need to add to the MT-Blacklist filter so that our blogs aren’t clogged with enticements to visit nasty-ass sites. If you block the word “incest”, they’ll spell it “insest.”
That’s not terrorism, we’re told, it’s commerce.
And we now routinely have two dollar a gallon gas in Atlanta. in Atlanta! And folks with huge Chevy Suburbans in my neighborhood have the ‘we support our president’ signs in the frontyard and apparently the incomes that can keep those vehicles moving no matter what the price. An outsized Mcmansion is being constructed a few blocks from here and the insulation-wrap is printed with “God bless America–made in USA.’
And that bothers me too. If I’m building a house, do I get to choose insulation that doesn’t have a religous statement on it?
I’m ticking these off as much as anything so that when I read this entry years from now, I hope I can look back on these times as an aberration that we grow out of…that we come up with a way to have a nation that embraces differences and is genuinely respected worldwide…and we have a global network of intercommunication that works, respects others, and allows a healthy anonymity while not serving as a breeding ground for the worst that people are.
I’m hoping.
