Clear Thinking

If you are at all interested in the current battle of us those who want to control our behavior (and charge us for it), here's an excellent article from Adam Engst at TidBITS.com TidBITS: Why DRM Offends the Sensibilities.

Completed step one

Well, over the weekend I managed to sort through most of my music files. I found album art for most, which is cool.

Still left to do:

1. Review CDs and make sure everything is ripped in
2. Find a way to organize all of the “singles”
3. Back the damn thing up.

As of this telling, I have 30 gigabytes of music, over 7,000 tracks – 21 DAYS of solid music.

See more progress on: organize my music collection

You'll take it the way we give it to you, and you'll like it!

Yet one more columnist that has bought the party line from the music industry.

"Seems to me that one thing the shuffle movement does prove is the average music fan's preference for the song over its traditional home. The shuffle option is essentially killing the album, which has long been the music-industry standard for popular music releases."

First of all, there are very few artists that have delivered an entire album worth listening to in exactly the order it was delivered. And if you're talking pop, you're lucky to get more than one or two decent tracks in the whole thing. Then we get to the whole part of calling your typical pop musician an "artist".

Now I'll admit, I'm not your average music purchaser. There's no way I can put my new 60 gig iPod into shuffle mode. I have over 30 gig of music on there - almost a solid month of listening. And shuffle would produce a shocking mix of jazz, classical, bluegrass, pop and rock, even ambient and electronica. When I buy music, it's either something specific - an individual track, or an entire album of classical, which typically represents a cohesive work, like a symphony or opera. I'd buy a hell of a lot more music, but what I want isn't easily available. And no, I don't want the whole album, thank you very much.

I do have a large collection, thanks in part to a friend that has complied what the people here at work call "The history of rock" - one of the ultimate mix tapes. Of course, it's neither a mix or a tape, but you know what I mean. But think of a top 40 song from the past 50 years and more likely than not, it's on my iPod.

Which is part of the reason I've named the new iPod "LOC".

Hedwig will know what that stands for.

Wither The Safety Net?

The Owl and Every Fool has posted today on Social Security, so I suppose I should join in as well!

The Owl's Perch - You Bet Your Life

Privatization of the fund is a horrible idea. Hedwig is dead right - most will lose - the rich and powerful will get richer.

And the most important part: it disconnects the individual from our shared destiny. The entire idea of "it's my money" is flawed and a serious rearrangement of society. The entire purpose of Social Security is to provide a basic level of support for all. The entire notion of the safety net is this: we as a society won't let anyone live in poverty. OK, so it doesn't work as well as we intended, but that doesn't mean it's fundamentally broken. Private accounts will break it.

I'm in favor of the following reforms:

1. Pay back the fund. The government has balanced its books too long on the SS surplus. Time to pay EVERY PENNY BACK. Yes, that may require raising taxes, but it's a debt, so pay it back.

2. Lock box the fund - stop borrowing it. Period.

3. Limit who can receive benefits. This is a tough one, but again, key to the idea of the safety net: if you make over $100,000 per year, you get nothing. You don't need it. I've planned my retirement without Social Security. If my plans work out and I have a comfortable retirement income, I plan on donating the benefit I receive. Think of it more like insurance than a retirement fund. It's there if you need it, but if you don't need it, good for you.

4. Increase the base benefits. If you make less than $40,000 a year you'll receive benefits to take you to $40,000 - which is a livable income. Benefits will be tied to the rate of inflation and current wage numbers so the purchasing power remains the same.

Give me leaders that can make the case - we need to care for every American. Social Security is part of the way we do that. If I personally don't need it, great. It's not welfare, it's part of our commitment to our fellow Americans.

Ah, There Still Are Heros

LLOYD AXWORTHY's open letter to Condoleeza Rice "As our erstwhile Prairie-born and bred (and therefore prudent) finance minister pointed out in presenting his recent budget, we've had eight years of balanced or surplus financial accounts. If we're going to spend money, Mr. Goodale added, it will be on day-care and health programs, and even on more foreign aid and improved defence."

Thanks to Boing Boing!

The Writer As hero

Hedwig pointed me to this: He was blacklisted in a national witch hunt. Yet writer Dalton Trumbo never lost his integrity.

We live in an age where it is said, "there are no heros and perhaps there never were." And yet, look at this man, Dalton Trumbo. Here's a man that stood up to tyranny, suffered the loss of his profession, even went to prison. And then he continued to work, hidden, behind the scenes. Here's your hero.

We need more Trumbos now. We need individuals that will stand up to the FCC and say, "Fuck you." We need heros that will tell the truth to power and not back down. We need a real press, unafraid to lose their White House credentials. We need quiet, powerful men and women that won't be shouted down, won't be silenced, won't go away.

We need people to proudly reclaim the title "liberal".

I'd love to see Dennehy's performance. I hope it finds its way to New York and the recognition that it needs.

Haunted by a bluegrass band

Last night I met the UPS man at the door to collect my new 60 gig iPod Photo. I hooked it up last night and now can carry my entire music collection, all of my digital photos, and all of my documents and STILL have 20 gigabytes left. I’m sure I’ll figure out how to fill it up soon.

And what’s the first thing I’m listening to this morning? Del McCoury And The Boys

I don’t really listen to that much bluegrass or frankly, know anything about it, but there’s something fascinating about it. A couple of years back at the height of the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” craze I took the girls to the “Down From the Mountain” concert. Dell and the Boys played as one of the many terrific acts and sang, “All Aboard”. The song is a ghost story, gospel religious experience, and downright frightening and thrilling. It’s not available on iTunes, but go look for this album. There’s a wide mix of stuff there, all with a bluegrass treatment.

See more progress on: organize my music collection

Part I Henry VI

It begins. Yesterday at lunch I found myself alone, my lunch meeting canceled. Luckily, I try to keep one rule in my life: never leave the house without something to read. I had place the new, portable “Complete Works of William Shakespeare” in the side pocket of the door of my car – couldn’t do that with my well worn, but gigantic Riverside Shakespeare.

So, sitting at Bob Evans, eating a bowl of potato soup, I read Act I of Henry VI, Part I. Sword fights, sieges, cannon fire, funerals of kings, even Joan of Arc! Will sure knew how to kick off a show!

See more progress on: read all of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets in chronological order

Not enough time

That's the answer to the question below.

"Why haven't other rodents evolved the ability to aviate?"

Just not enough time. Look at the time frames for the evolution of birds. Took a hell of a long time, a long, long time ago. Mammals are much more recent. They just haven't had time. Our (Homo Sapien's) ability to observe such a change is pitifully short.

Here's my thesis: more mammals will develop flying abilities. Let's leave the planet - everyone. OK, come back in, let's say 100 million years. My bet is that you'll find plenty of flying mammals. Lot's of little annoying ones. And a few, big, scary ones.

First, flying squirrels develop from gliding to true flight. If they're successful, they'd multiply greatly. Next, you'd have a predator that would take to the air after them, let's say a fox variety. Other, fast breeding species like rabbits might find it useful to get off the ground, which would bring bigger predators along with them, say bobcats or coyotes. But the birds won't give up their dominion very easily. There are a bunch of very effective preditor birds that would just love to find the air full of flying furballs.

But you know what might be more likely? If humanity abandoned the planet for that long, I'm betting another hominid species might just step up and take our place.

On second thought, at the end of the 100 million years, let's send Charlton Heston back first to check and see how things are going.

I'd like to thank the Academy . . .

I saw a bit of the Academy Awards presentation last night - I didn't get back from Jennifer's skating lesson till nearly a quarter to 10 (Sunday night skating lessons suck, BTW). I quickly caught up with the award count and have the following observations:

Someone has finally gotten control of the excesses and really worked out some fair and efficient means of moving things along. I thought having nominees for many of the awards already on stage really helped. I liked less the "give it to them in their seats" bit. Should for any bizarre reason I find myself nominated for such an award, I want up on the stage.

I also noted that I have seen less of the movies nominated for this past year than seems in years past, and more than a couple I saw only because they were already released on DVD. I only saw "Million Dollar Baby" Saturday night. It was an excellent film, but I've yet to see "The Aviator" or "Vera Drake" or "Finding Neverland" or "Being Julia". Haven't seen "Hotel Rwanda", "Motorcycle Diaries", "The Very Long Engagement". I haven't seen the Lemony Snicket mess of a movie and hope not to. And you'd have to pay me and pay me well to see "The Passion of the Christ."

I did see "Ray" and it's a fine biopic with and excellent performance by Foxx.

And my favorite movie of the year? "The Incredibles."

Get Out While You Have A Chance

If you are currently holding any type of variable rate mortgage or interest payment, get out now. Don't wait or you'll be seriously screwed.

Opinion: "When a country lives on borrowed time, borrowed money and borrowed energy, it is just begging the markets to discipline it in their own way at their own time. As I said, usually the markets do it in an orderly way - except when they don't."

I'm serious about this. No variable rate mortgates or balloon payments. No credit card debt. Do anything you can to take care of this now - don't wait, I mean in the next few weeks and months.

Could you handle it if your mortgage payment shot up three or four hundred dollars a month? What about your credit card payments, your car loan?

Higher interest rates would be good for me, but not for most people. What if your home loan was at 18%? It's not been that many years ago that they were that high.

Listen. The sky is falling. Seriously. I don't know who reads this stuff, but it's important.

Oh, and for your reading pleasure and edification, see The Black Obelisk.

Flush or Pack It Out

There are many reasons I consider myself to luckily to be in a committed, monogamous relationship. Here's one more:

'She asserts that when plaintiff 'delivered' his sperm, it was a gift -- an absolute and irrevocable transfer of title to property from a donor to a donee,' the decision said. 'There was no agreement that the original deposit would be returned upon request.'

And one more reason that both men and women need to take complete responsibility of their sexuality. This guy thought he was and found out he was wrong.

Here's the rule for all you single guys or those with multiple parthers - and it's got to be absolute: No sex without a condom. That includes oral sex. Unless you are in a committed, long term relationship AND after blood tests.

Oh, and you must either flush the used comdom or take it with you. (what's the emoticon for a shudder?)

It Is Inadvisable To Blog While Sleeping

Last night, at some, semi-lucid point, I spent some time composing today's blog entry. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have been posted and I can't remember what I was dream-writing about. Seemed brilliant at the time.

Guess the folks at Blogger.com need to work on that interface a bit more.

Tonight's another "kid concert." You know the kind: one of those school concerts where you kid plays and you've got to go. Both of my girls are musically talented, and I enjoy hearing them play, but we seem to get on these runs where they all bunch together. Last week Jennifer had a "Drama Kids" performance on Tuesday night and a middle school concert Thursday. She had a skating competition on Saturday which meant we had to leave the house before 6 AM. Sunday Kathleen had a Columbus Youth Jazz concert, followed by a full concert by the Columbus Jazz Orchestra. It's always enjoyable, but that eats up an entire Sunday afternoon. Tonight Kathleen has a high school orchestra concert in preparation for the state orchestra competition tomorrow night (which I will not be attending). This concert by itself would be enjoyable, but the director decided the concert would be too short, so he changed it at the last minute to combine with another middle school concert. That's right, I get to sit through another middle school concert, one where I don't have any kids in it. Do you think it would be rude to take my iPod?

Oh, and another concert Sunday afternoon - this one for the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra.

As You Like It

I hadn’t intended on starting my little Shakespeare chronologically project quite yet, but my daughter asked me to read the play to help her with her homework. It had been years, probably since grad school, so I said sure.

Lovely.

We spent some time talking about the play when she was doing her assignment and one of the questions was about the use of language because, the test writer asserted, that the play was so “talky” and nothing happened.

Excuse me? God save us from English teachers! No wonder why so many kids end up thinking that these plays are boring. If I were the king of the forest, I’d insist that any play, before it is read, must be SEEN. And not read in class with students sitting and reading the parts. Performed. By someone that knows what they are doing.
Why is the character of Jaques humorous? Hard to tell just reading the words. But Jaques is a type. He’s a melancholic. And he’s played to the hilt. Everyone knows the second he walks on stage exactly what he’s like. But Shakespeare takes him up a level or so. He isn’t just this one thing. And he gets a brilliant speech that shows us exactly that. “All the world’s a stage.”

This play, read, without knowing anything about how it is to be performed, is a trifle. But imagine it, fully realized, wonderful costumes, dancing, singing! See the wrestling match as a huge opportunity for physical comedy (unstead of one line They wrestle.) Think of the shepherds and clowns, country bumpkins, general silliness. It is a complete hoot.
And remember, you, standing in the pit, a groundling, are also in on the joke. A boy, playing a girl, pretending to be a boy, asking her lover to pretend she, he thinking her a boy, is actually a girl, having another girl fall in love with her.
How do we know it is funny? Not from reading alone, dear teacher. We know because the actors show us. Taking nothing from Shakespeare – he knew it well – the play’s the thing.

See more progress on: read all of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets

Battling Evil Elephants

So, what were they up to all those years?

Humans just got 35,000 years older
: "'It pushes back the beginning of anatomically modern humans. It is significant because the cultural aspects of humanity in most cases appear much later in the record - only 50,000 years ago - which would mean 150,000 years of Homo sapiens without cultural stuff, such as evidence of eating fish, of harpoons, anything to do with music, needles, even tools. This stuff all comes in very late, except for stone knife blades, which appeared between 50,000 and 200,000 years ago,' says geologist Frank Brown, a co- author of the study and dean of the University of Utah's College of Mines and Earth Sciences.
"

Let's imagine for a moment, shall we? If anatomically identical humans existed 200,000 years ago, did it really take them 150,000 years to take that first step towards civilization and away from pure animal existence? I find that hard (but not impossible) to believe. What were they up to?

I've always wondered why they killed off all the mastodons (took them till about 10,000 years ago). Maybe humanity spent 190,000 years battling a race of evil, furry elephants. Maybe they weren't the lumbering, gentle giants that could just be herded off a nearby cliff (bad news if you're in Ohio - not many cliffs nearby). Maybe they were vicious, intelligent, and hated these new ape creatures. Maybe humanity's greatest triumph is something we've never heard about.

Perhaps we should think about that before cloning any of them back.

Or maybe I should have another cup of coffee.

All In

OK, I admit it. I've caught the poker bug, too.

But I haven't completely gone around the bend like some of my friends and acquaintances. In fact, for me it might be a healthy hobby.

Self justification, you say? On the contrary. I find the game fun, easy to learn, difficult to master. It is a social activity. I've gone to great extremes to build a movie theater in my home, but even when I entertain there, it's sitting quietly in the same room - hardly social. Playing poker is by its very nature an activity where you must pay close attention to everyone at the table, even learn something about the people there. Or lose.

An evening's play may cost me $20 or so, or put money in my pocket. I'm not interested in big tournament play, although I did enjoy playing in Vegas recently (where I played Texas Hold'em for over 2 hours and walked away even money). And since I've started playing - just this year, I'm already meeting new people and getting invited out.

This may seem strange and ordinary to you, but for me, it's a big deal. I'm reaching the stage as a parent where the kids are interested in being on their own. For the last 16 years Diane and I have had little time for anything other than work and family and that means very few friends and next to no social life outside of the rare opportunity to get out on our own. So having fun with friends, getting invited out, having people over to the house is not only fun, but rewarding.

Mesmerizing Coolness

Just plain cool. The Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager

But it raises more questions than it answers. The main question that cannot be answered with the marvelous display of data is "why?". Why does a particular name grow or decline in popularity. What causes these peaks and falloffs?

Teach Evolution: Leave No Child Behind

Teach Evolution: Leave No Child Behind: "Teaching the age and history of our planet takes us back about 4.6 billion years; it is included in only 55% of our 50 State’s science education standards."

It's sad, but not surprising.

Strong science education with real standards is critical to growing an educated population capable of thinking and understanding complex ideas.

Oh, wait. You didn't want that? Bread and circuses, baby!

OK, taking a deep breath.

Here are the fundamentals that EVERY person should know:

1. The universe is roughly 13 billion years old.
   
2. The Earth is about 4.6 billion years old.
   
3. The process in which life was created and arrived at the state it is in today is know as evolution.
   
4. There's lots of stuff we don't know or understand. The scientific method is how we find out.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Not So Smart Water

Schneier on Security: Smart Water: "The idea is for me to paint this stuff on my valuables as proof of ownership. I think a better idea would be for me to paint it on your valuables, and then call the police."

Everyday, in every way, I'm getting better and better

Hmm, just keep repeating that.

Now, where's that damn Clouseau gotten off to?

See more progress on: write in my blog everyday