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October 2, 2002
JD Lasica blogs the O’Reilly OS X conference where Digital Rights Management is the topic du jour. He quotes Tim O’Reilly, who is high up on my God Bless ‘Im list:
“If I’m a publisher and given the choice of piracy or obscurity, I choose piracy.”
Dan Gillmor is blogging the conference, as is GlennF (taking notes as people speak). As JD points out, Glenn ends his entry with the hopeful phrase:
Fair use has a posse.
Let’s hope. And it’s about time.
Boston, Oct. 2. In response to NBC’s decision to extend Friends two minutes in order to hold viewers past the start of other networks’ 8:30 shows, JOHO the Blog today announced that it is moving to a 23.6 hour publishing schedule.
Joho the Blog is an industry-leading weblog, bringing enhanced enterprise competitiveness to today’s demanding global economy.
October 1, 2002
Gary Turner advises me that I’m no longer the 6th hit on Google if you search for “david.” I’ve been pushed down to #25 by the new #1 (David Bowie) as well as by David Lynch, David Gray, David Brin, David Grisman, Harry and David, and other famous and deserving David’s.
Yet I am crushed. Our neighbor’s seven year old is currently fanning me with a peacock feather and intermittently holds a restorative mint julep to my wan lips. In months, perhaps weeks, I shall have the courage to venture out again.
Matt Frondorf is driving from the Statue of Liberty to the Golden Gate, taking a picture every mile. In an interview, he calls it “statistical photography.” The pictures are on display in a nicely designed Flash app over at the Kodak site. Oddly affecting.
My Top Ten picks to replace Sen. Robert Torricelli in New Jersey:
10. Bill Bradley
9. Bruce Springsteen8. Corrado “Junior” Soprano
7. Thomas Edison
6. David Copperfield (magician, not waif)
5. Allen Ginsberg
4. Bud Abbot
3. Philip Roth
2. Dorothy Parker
1. Pocahontas
September 30, 2002
1. After you’ve finished disbelieving your eyes at the current Web sensation, you can see a set of great Flash demos of optical illusions here.
2. Web Collage generates collages from random images on the Web. It updates about once a minute.
3. Steve Himmer has an hilarious exposition on the meta-absurd copyright infringement case involving two silent recordings. It’s just too wonderful for words. Of course, if I were to remain silent about it, I could expect an angry letter from the estate of John Cage.
4. At the palindromic I Love Me, Vol. I, you can see what happens when the sliding door of a radio station van is moved all the way to the left, especially if the radio station is called HITS.
September 29, 2002
Jane Black writes in BusinessWeek online about the Eldred case about to be argued before the Supreme Court by Larry Lessig. At issue is whether copyrights can be extended past the point at which the cold dead fingers clutching the work have crumbled into a pile of greedy dust. It’s a straightforward, well-written, balanced column that tells the truth and thus implicitly sides with Eldred.
I find this truly heartening. The hardcore arguments for Eldred/Lessig’s position are all well and good and I believe every one of them. But we need much more than hardcore rants. We need our position to become common sense. Only thus can the tide be turned. Black’s article helps, as do a slew of other mainstream articles to which Doc points.
Maybe there’s hope for hope yet.
(Because I’m essentially a wuss, I won’t point out that the Court that’s deciding the case is 5/9ths asshole.)
AKMA writes with his usual refreshing candor about why, despite Margaret’s irrefutable comparison of great suspense novels and Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, one’s a page turner and the other’s snooze inducing.
Since the obvious answer is that we are naturally interested in the plight of other humans whereas the thrill of the intellectual hunt is an acquired taste, I got to thinking about the books I’ve read that combine personal narrative anda rigorous intellectual development.
The first book to pop into mind was Leon Wieseltier’s Kaddish. As he does the ritual 11 months of daily temple-going to pray for his dead father, Wieseltier pursues an obscure question — Why does Kaddish fall exactly where it does in the service? — through centuries of Talmudic scholarship. It is a question in which I have absolutely no interest, but because the quest so clearly is the way that Wieseltier is grieving, the book is quite moving.
There must be a million other examples but to play the book’s ideas have to be rigorously developed. For me, this excludes Jung’s Autobiography, Robertson Davies’ novels, anything written by Carlos Castaneda, and The Name of the Rose. Also, the works of Plato are excluded because they are, as apparently they say in golf, a gimme. What the hell, let’s also exclude any autobiography by someone famous first for his or her intellectual development, e.g., St. Augustine’s Confessions, because while those works recount how ideas were developed, they generally don’t themselves develop the ideas.
Note that all rules will be applied with strict arbitrariness.
September 28, 2002
I just posted my first review at BlogCritics.org. Here’s how it starts:
Changing Lanes Changing Endings
Since I am about to write about the ending of “Changing Lanes,” stop reading if you haven’t seen the movie. It’s a movie worth seeing, but you’re best off not even knowing what type of movie it is. In fact, let me do you a favor: Expect an action-packed two hours as Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson square off in a drama that sprawls across New York City in one last caper that goes unexpectedly wrong. Beautiful women, wise-cracking heroes, great car chases!
That should hold you. And I’ve just done you a favor because the movie has none of that but plays best if you think it does.
So, now that it’s just us who have seen the movie, let’s talk.
Continued here.
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