Amen…
“Most of all this is a movie about how the young’uns have no tools for moral discourse and that all they can do is utter banalities and take endless pictures of each other and record their lives for no apparent purpose.”
Cloverfield is a fantastic movie for all the wrong reasons and makes you scratch your eyeballs/head/logic and reconsider who you’d go back for. Go see it for your own benefit and realize what Abrams, etc are trying to express.
Awesome.
Then came this gem: In the mid-80s, tired of getting Hunter S. Thompson’s column copy late, by snail-mail, the editors of the San Francisco Examiner took the plunge and sent Thompson a new gizmo called a “Mac.” The relationship between the fabled journalist and his electronic tool was reportedly troubled from the beginning. It ended shortly thereafter, when Thompson called his editor screaming in frustration, grabbed his shotgun, and blasted the youthful Steve Jobs’s creation to smithereens. Then he sent back the pieces.
Silicon Alley Insider: Hunter S. Thompson Reviews Apple’s New Mac
Shawn Collins, Jim Kukral and I discuss political affiliate programs, what we hope to do with GeekCast.fm, problems the affiliate networks aren't solving and innovation in the affiliate space.
Twitter is like an indie band that did well and now is selling out stadiums across the world.
It’s interesting to me that when I first started using Twitter in 2006, the amount of “in-twitter” replies using the @ sign were low. If I came across someone using the @ sign more than a few times a day I tended to not follow or unfollow them because, at first, the platform wasn’t about conversing. Twitter was about answering the simple question of what we all were doing. It was interesting and amazing. The music and giddiness of something new was there.
Now, in 2008 and with 700k members, Twitter is less about telling people what we are doing and more about the “conversation” and follows the aesthetics of an IRC chat. Twitter has become a Rolling Stones-esque performance show with lead singers prancing around on the social stage clad like Bono and jubilant like Mic Jagger. It’s fun to watch, but after a few hours, I’m ready to go home and put the headphones on so I can enjoy the music like I did years ago.
I follow around 600 people, and now seeing a tweet without the @ sign is a rarity, but always gets my attention and makes me nostalgic for the good old days before Twitter made it to the cover of Rolling Stone and we practiced in a garage.
Then isn’t better than now, and the opposite is true. However, now is different than then. I don’t necessarily want Twitter to become a social network because I don’t need or want another social network. I do want to see what other people are doing, though.
Perhaps someone will make an @-less platform where we can just play our music and not have to worry about the crowds or the groupies or the roadies.
How about an acoustic Twitter album?
Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story…
Finish the rest here. It’s short but good.
And here’s some background on the Desiderata.
Cat Powers’ new album Jukebox comes out next week, but it’s available for streaming and listening pleasure exclusively on Rhapsody. I highly recommend it.
For all the beatings that Rhapsody takes, I do love the service and have been a subscriber for a while. If you don’t mind “renting” your music and have a constant internet connection (and about $12 a month to spare), I highly recommend it as well.
If you’re a Ryan Adams fan (you’re not? you’re nuts), check out this YouTube channel (D.R. Adams) for all sorts of goodness.
Tremendous. Speaks volumes…
My friend, mentor and hero Prof Larry McGehee does a weekly column called “Southern Seen.” This week’s edition is a must read and tugs at your heart strings (especially if you know Larry and Betsy):
Betsy won her first round and stayed on for the second, both taped the same day. She won that one, too. Then she returned next day for her third appearance, adding an unbuttoned sweater to her attire, and this time she was defeated by a uniformed serviceman—a sailor, best I recall.
For her two wins and her three half-hour shows, Betsy received a set of Compton’s Encyclopedia (which we gave to her niece and nephew the next Christmas) and $1,225 (her memory–I recall it as $1,210).
Elizabeth was born November 2nd in what was then New Haven Hospital (now Yale Hospital). Betsy’s Jeopardy winnings paid the hospital and doctor’s bills. That fall and spring we house-sat a professor’s home for a year while he was on leave, and the absence of rent coupled with funds left from Betsy’s winnings made it possible for her to give up her teaching position. A year later we moved to the University of Alabama for my first post-graduate administrative job.
Thank you, Larry.
Amazing (thanks, Tracey):
Infant Swimming Resource
This is tremendous…
Flickr: Photos tagged with citationneeded
via boingboing
Tags: graffitiwikipedia
Happy New Year from Asheville.
While you’re recovering today, compare your library to Thomas Jefferson’s (and join LibraryThing while you’re at it… it’s my fav social network):
A unusual member has finished adding his 4,889 books to LibraryThing—our third president, Thomas Jefferson!
Jefferson, 264, was assisted by sixteen LibraryThing members, led by jbd1. Together, they cataloged 4,889 books (6,487 volumes), added 187 of his reviews (a treat), and tagged them 4,889 times, according to Jefferson’s own innovative/weird classification system.
It was hard work, but it only took them four months. They worked from scholarly reconstructions of Jefferson’s 1815 books, tracking down records in 34 libraries around the world. As is well known, Jefferson sold his books to the Library of Congress, replacing the one the British destroyed during the War of 1812. This 1815 library is Jefferson’s best-documented library. (Of course, Jefferson spent the rest of his life building up another personal collection.)
Just smile all the time…
Today is the 11th anniversary of the death of my hero Carl Sagan (thanks to Bad Astronomy for the reminder). Personally, it has been an emotionally trying year with the birth of our first child and soon thereafter the death of my childhood best friend and cousin (more like brother) in Afghanistan. I find wisdom in Dr. Sagan’s words about life, the cosmos and humanity today.
Echoing my post from a year ago, here’s the passage from Cosmos which I’ve read at the end of every class I’ve ever taught… whether science or religion bound:
“The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest conemplations of the Cosmos stir us – there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.
The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet ourspecies is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millenia we hav emad the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.
Those explorations required skepticism and imagination both. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never where. But without it, we go nowhere. Skepticism enables us to distinguish fancy from fact, to test our speculations. The Cosmos is rich beyond measure – in elegant facts, in exquisite interrelationships, in the subtle machinery of awe.
The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls. Some part of our being knows this is from where we came. We long to return. These aspirations are not, I think, irreverent, although they may trouble whatever gods may be.”
And here’s the video version:
This being my first year with a child, I can only hope that I pass on to her the wisdom, confidence and humbleness to always look up at the night sky.
Thank you, Carl Sagan.
Last week, my grad school alma mater Yale opened its doors to the web and followed the path of Stanford and M.I.T. by putting popular courses up for anyone to enjoy and learn from.
Here’s a great story from the NY Times about an amazing Physics teacher at M.I.T. who is using this newfound access to people outside the ivory towers to share his love for physics:
Professor Lewin’s videotaped physics lectures, free online on the OpenCourseWare of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have won him devotees across the country and beyond who stuff his e-mail in-box with praise.
“Through your inspiring video lectures i have managed to see just how BEAUTIFUL Physics is, both astounding and simple,” a 17-year-old from India e-mailed recently.
Chris Brogan wished his wife a happy birthday in a beautiful post on his blog today.
Following in his footsteps, I just wanted to give a quick “Thank you and I love you” to my wife. It has certainly been one heck of a year, but she impresses me more and more everyday with her skills as a physician, friend, wife and (now) mother…
Here’s to the next 50 holiday seasons!
Robert Scoble has started a fun trip down memory lane for all of us with his post “Celebrating Seven Years of Blogging.”
I formally started blogging in 2002 with Digital Moses then the relaunched ReveNews (my pal Jim Kukral was publisher of ReveNews at the time and has been blogging since 2000 or so). But the blogging that I’m most proud of was the class blog I started while I was teaching 8th Grade Physical Science at Hammond School in Columbia, SC. The blog was called SkyHawkScience and was a tremendous experience. I still tear up when I look at the archive on Internet Archive (took the site down because after I left teaching I didn’t want the blog to forever dominate my students’ Google indexes since it did gain popularity).
I still miss that blog. I’ve gone on to blog at CostPerNews, ReveNews again, HarrelsonReligion (my college class blog) and here (first on wordpress.com then as a hosted WordPress blog). I still like the SkyHawkScience blog the best, though.
Can’t wait to see this (Cobain was a huge influence on my life. I literally “woke up” the first time I heard the opening refrain of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in the car on the way to Marion, SC with my mom. I was forever changed…and still am):