“Where the Conflict Really Lies”
Since it’s Christmas, I feel it’s only appropriate to share some thoughts about a book on philosophy of religion I recently read.
Posts
2014
“I went to jail for my cause”
Peter Sunde writes a guest post for Wired:
Only a few activists left are actually doing things. We’re way underfunded, we’re getting older and we’re getting lazy.
“Shaka, when the walls fell”
Ian Bogost writes about a famous Star Trek TNG episode:
On stardate 45047.2, Jean-Luc Picard leads the crew of the Enterprise in pursuit of a transmission beacon from the El-Adrel system, where a Tamarian vessel has been broadcasting a mathematical signal for weeks. The aliens, also known as the Children of Tama, are an apparently peaceable and technologically advanced race with which the Federation nevertheless has failed to forge diplomatic relations. The obstacle, as Commander Data puts it: “communication was not possible.”
The funniest thing about this particular episode is how polarized opinions about it are. “Darmok” is by far the most controversial of all TNG episodes. While (as Bogost points out) the episode touches upon the very essence of Star Trek and Gene Rodenberry’s vision of utopian human future, most controversy that surrounds it concerns how… unserious it is. I think this might be the only TNG episode that I felt slightly uncomfortable watching, because of how silly it felt.
Spotify, Pandora and how streaming music kills jazz and classical
“All of my colleagues — composers and arrangers — are seeing huge cuts in their earnings,” says Paul Chihara, a veteran composer who until recently headed UCLA’s film-music program.
Jazz icon Charlie Haden dies at 76
I am very sad to read that Charlie Haden died last Friday.1 He was one of the first jazz musicians I ever heard about, when my dad bought the now legendary “Beyond the Missouri Sky” (Verve 1997) record, and I immediately fell in love with his great bass lines and compositions.
Speed and aerodynamics
Companies selling "speed" and "aerodynamics" to dudes who only ride on the weekends, rather than selling them an experience.
— John Watson (@JohnProlly) June 10, 2014 I used to laugh at people paying $7k for bicycles with handmade steel frames and all the hype that surrounded the whole NAHBS community.
Wayne Shorter Quartet at USF Verftet (NattJazz 2014)
I first heard about Wayne Shorter when my dad bought the brilliant “1+1” (Verve 1997) album he recorded with Herbie Hancock.
Strava is helping to build better bike lanes
Wired:
Current methods of counting cyclists take a ton of time or a ton of money. The DOT can videotape traffic and have someone sit at a monitor and count cyclists, or it can send someone to sit on the sidewalk and watch them go by in real time.
Hit & Run
Last Sunday night I was walking home and I got hit by a car on a zebra crossing.1 It was pretty late (around 11:30pm) and there was very little traffic.
put.io
put.io is a service that lets you download and seed torrents, and also watch the downloaded movie files, in the cloud. An obvious question that such a business model raises is a matter of illegal downloads, and that spawned an interesting discussion on HN.
Whenever I read discussions about illegal torrent downloads, I immediately think of three issues.
The first one is convenience – as a Netflix and HBO Nordic customer I miss the comfort of watching great quality mp4 files so much that I… became an IPredator customer, and I download the movies/shows I already payed for simply to be able to watch them without my laptop fan spinning like crazy.1
The second is the whole issue of what’s right, and how human beings aren’t necessarily entitled to watch the latest episode of “Mad Men” whenever and however they want. I used to support this claim and I still think that the argument of “I can’t get it in any other way so I’m gonna download it illegally using bittorrent” is weak, but I find it very unpragmatic to simply forbid downloading. I’m also starting to believe that contemporary TV shows and movies are becoming a significant part of modern culture to a degree that it’s just not right to deny access to that part to people who don’t have Netflix in their countries, or can’t afford going to the cinema very often.