Two Ideas

Now that The New York Times has weighed in on the Boing Boing versus Violet Blue imbroglio, a topic where I didn’t realize I had much to say, I realized that I did have a couple of words.

I think it’s really very good when people reconsider the things they’ve said in conversation. My goodness, you can still find things I wrote on the Internet ten or fifteen years ago, and I certainly don’t think all of the same things now. I think that the evolution of personal viewpoints is normal, and healthy, and should be welcome.

However, I think it’s really bad when you pretend not to have said the things that you previously did. To enforce this kind of ex post facto internal consistency is dishonest. Maybe not to-the-core dishonest, but certainly untrustworthy, and in general not the kind of conversational partner I want to have.

I think that de-publishing is much closer to (but not the same as) pretending you never said something than it is to reconsidering previous viewpoints. It does strike me as uncomfortably Orwellian, even if it is a private group doing it, rather than the government. I mean, how would people feel if the New York Times decided to remove every mention of Monica Lewinsky from their archive due to poor behavior on her part? If Warren Ellis is right, and Cory and Xeni are the “cut and paste editors of the Internet,” then it matters, regardless of whether that job was thrust upon them or one that they willingly embraced.

Finally, wading through blog comments on this whole issue reminds me why it’s a good thing to keep your conversations small in the first place.

Warren Ellis very nearly gets at something I’ve tried to get my head around for some time.To butcher his argument, the Web is, or should be, moving beyond the era of linkblogs like Boing Boing “curating” the net. He thinks it’s easy enough getting linked, and that “half the web” shouldn’t just be links to the other half.

But I think Mr. Ellis, who I hold in the highest esteem, misses something: link curation is a type of collage, which comes from the French word coller, meaning “to paste.” So when he writes, “Cory and Xeni [of Boing Boing] are the copy/paste editors for the internet,” he’s actually describing what they do as collage.

Linkblogging is only one kind of collage, or more broadly assemblage, which some people have begun to think of as art. We all know, or have been, that guy who thinks that his mix tapes are art, or his DJing is art, or that his mashups and submissions to I can has cheezburger? are art.

And maybe they are. I don’t want to be in the business of telling people what is or isn’t art. But then, if all collage, all “remix culture” is art, so is wearing the right combination of designer clothes (wardrobe design, not fashion design), stuffing your house full of the right stuff (interior furnishing, not interior design), and listening to the right bands are art. Because you’re assembling them, transforming them into something new through combination and personalization. And I don’t want to go down that road, myself: consumption and self-selection through purchasing aren’t art, at least not to me.

So if these things aren’t art, or are art only incidentally, what is their primary function?

The astute reader will guess my assertion by checking my post title: I think these things are a conversation, an ongoing conversation.

Now, conversation absolutely can be cultural production in the Warren Ellis-approved sense: good book reviews, or film reviews, are part of a conversation between the author or filmmaker, the critic, other critics, and the reader or viewer. Mixtapes achieve their power through comparison and contrast, reinforcement and juxtaposition. The best LOLcats, as Anil Dash has argued, achieve their power through a consistent grammar of repetition and variation changing through time. Isn’t that just a fancy way of describing a conversation?

This is one reason that blogs with comments seemed to be the thing just a little while ago. I remember, at the one Seattle Bloggers meetup I can recall attending, that Robert Scoble criticized my metablog design for not making comments obvious. I felt, and still feel, that the best response to a blog post isn’t a comment but another blog post. Now Scoble says that blog comments are dead. I can’t figure out if I’m on the bleeding edge, or so far back that I only look like I’m in the race. (Or maybe the universe wraps around on itself, and I am so far back that I’m in first place. Or vice-versa.)

In the end, it might be nice to separate the web into content and remixed indices to that content, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think we’re going to keep surfing the wave of remix culture for some time to come, and that the waves will be made of old and new alike. Sorry Warren, the linkblog is probably here to stay, at least for a while.

In his review of the new production of The Bacchae, starring Alan Cumming as Dionysus, Charles Isherwood compares Cumming’s appearance to Shirley Temple and Boy George, missing (or ignoring) the obvious debt to The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s Frank N Furter. So when Isherwood writes that the production’s “insistent playfulness makes the transition to the horror of the final scenes troublesome,” I wonder if he’s watching the same play that I’d be seeing. (The use of pop R&B songs written for the production increases my sense that this production owes more than a little to Rocky Horror.)

In other words, if I magically end up with a couple of extra hours one night in New York, I’d love to see this. (Aw, crap, it ends on the 13th, several days before I make it to New York.  Maybe I come down from Connecticut over the weekend? Anyone in New York want to see this next Friday night?)

Well, my plans for today more or less fell through, so I’m chilling alone at home. Somehow, the grill on the roof-deck broke just in time for the hottest week of the year, and is still busted. So I’m heating up the broiler, which means for dinner I’m having a salad, quick-pickled zucchini, and a broiled steak. I’ll drink a beer, too. Not bad, all told.

I’m definitely enjoying the time and space to myself, which has let me accomplish a bunch of stuff: record-keeping, bill-paying, some housecleaning, some organization. I managed to sort the stuff in my freezer, which is good, and type up what I’ve written so far of a short story, which is better. All the money stuff is up-to-date, all the dishes are washed and the trash out. It sounds simple, but it’s stuff I don’t normally have time to do the way I’d like to.

I’d hoped to have a lot more time to do this kind of stuff with Laura out of town, but work calls: nine days, five cities. Tuesday I fly to Boston, where I’ll work Wednesday and Thursday. Thursday night I’ll take the train down to Connecticut, and possibly work in Greenwich on Friday. It’s not unlikely that the customer won’t be available, which would give me a three-day weekend just a bit north of New York.

I’ll see some family over that weekend, perform remote maintenance for a customer late Saturday night, and that Sunday I’ll fly to Atlanta. Monday I’ll have meetings in Atlanta, then fly to Baltimore. Tuesday I’ll have a meeting near Baltimore, return the car to the airport, and take a train to New York. Wednesday I’ve got a meeting in New York. Possibly I’ll take the train up to Greenwich that afternoon, or the next day, if I’m unable to do that work the previous Friday. Right now, however, I’m scheduled to fly home that Thursday.

I’m exhausted just thinking about it!

Tonight, after dinner and dish washing, I’ll probably watch 300, which I’m only moderately interested in, but which Laura is completely disinterested in.  I’ve also rented Vantage Point, which I might see tonight, or tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll hit the Farmer’s Market in the U District, pick up a couple of things for dinner, and basically knock around all weekend relaxing. I’m thinking spicy garlic-chili-basil pork noodles tomorrow night, pizza Sunday night, and leftovers Monday night, so there’s not too much hanging around when I fly away on Tuesday.

If you’ve got anything fun planned in Seattle this weekend, let me know. I’ve got enough to keep myself busy, but I’m sure that I’d find time for exciting stuff.

Near the end of an article in this Sunday’s New York Times magazine, Can Weeds Help Solve the Climate Crisis?, the following paragraph jumped out at me:

Developing techniques for managing weeds in a time of global climate change will be essential to the world’s agricultural future, and the U.S.D.A. researchers, though they have been starved of essential financing, lead the world in this field. (There is one exception, Ziska admits; his Web searches have revealed that marijuana growers have an amazingly detailed knowledge of how CO2 enrichment affects their crop. But as Ziska points out, they don’t publish in scientific journals.) Possession of this expertise could be a great economic asset to the United States, both for the protection it could provide to our own harvests and as an intellectual export that is sure to be much in demand in other countries.

For me, this conjured a Bruce Sterling-like near-future scenario where uncredentialed pot growers get snapped up by big agribusiness and shadowy government research facilities, a twenty-first-century variation on the MK Ultra theme. Only, this time, it’s for a good cause. We promise.

• Didn’t go to see William Gibson. Did enjoy an evening at home, watching Dirty Harry with Laura. We’ve been watching a whole lot of iconic-but-not-necessarily-good films lately.
• Did go scuba diving, finally, on Sunday.  Laura got to try a new, much smaller, wetsuit, which fit.  We went to Brackett’s Landing (aka Edmonds Underwater Park) with Cindy and several other people, but the visibility was terrible enough that we gave up after the first dive.  Which leaves me with 49 dives under my belt. (I’d been hoping to hit fifty — guess that will happen next time.)  Other than the poor viz and a long surface swim, it definitely seems like a promising dive site, given how close it is to home, and the size of the few fish we could see through the murk, cabezon and lingcod alike.
• Next Thursday, Laura is abandonining me vacationing in Chicago without me for two weeks, to celebrate her unemployment, and see old friends. Wish I could join her, but I’ve got stuff to do. Heck, I might even be traveling for work myself for a week of that time.  I’ve also got a long list of my own projects that I need to address.
• I’m constantly torn between my deep-seated desire for stablity and my wild yearning for radical departure. This day, this week, this month, this year are no different in that respect. Just throwing that out there.
• I’m still trying to find more people who want to go scuba diving in Seattle on a regular basis, either with both me and Laura or just a singleton needing a buddy, as Laura and I have somewhat different dive appetites at the moment.
• The six-month-old home theater experiment has been a success, so far as reducing attendance at movie theatres: the only film we’ve seen together in the theater since December was the new Indiana Jones movie.  (During my last month of business trips, my colleagues and I saw some forgettable schlock horror film and Laura got to see Cecil B. Demented presented by John Waters himself.) If we previously went to the theater about twice a month on average, at something like $40 with snacks and drinks for the pair of us, that’s $40 x 12 = $480 we’ve saved, about one-third of what we spent on the improvements. (The cost of staying at home is a DVD or Blu-Ray rental, which given our pre-pay at the video store is less than two bucks apiece.  Even including our entire video block in the cost of the home theater, it’s still better than 25% of the way to payback.)
• Work manages to be challenging, and to provide lots of opportunities for both company and personal improvement. A lot of the time it feels like treading water or worse, but I do feel that other people frequently recognize my accomplishments.
• I’m putting enough time and energy into work that I’m not able to write effectively. I just don’t have the time. I have a full story drafted in a notebook that I need to type, edit, and perhaps rewrite; I have another story about one-third done, a story that I’m really excited about but just don’t have time to complete. Perhaps I’ll get to finish it when Laura’s out of town.
• Almost finished watching Season 5 of The Wire, which is without a doubt the best television show ever. I’m more than a little sorry to see it end.
• Maybe writing in bullet points lets me say more, since I feel less compelled to explicitly connect my thoughts to each other. The connections are there, but more oblique.
• Saw Tonx and Emily for dinner the other night. It was good to see them, and I’m looking forward to their return to Seattle in the coming months.
• I’m bummed by my growing inability to reach out and connect to my larger circle of friends, scattered across at least this hemisphere. It’s almost entirely my failing that I’m so bad at keeping in touch, despite really really missing a whole lot of people, and wanting to enjoy their company, if only virtually. But of course, the longer I let these things lie, the more challenging it is to reconnect.
• Laura’s back from her evening walk/jog session. Time to go do other stuff now.

I’ve discovered that William Gibson is onstage tonight, being interviewed by Nancy Pearl, for free.

I’m planning to attend.

[Edit: The official event page indicates that this will cost $10. Not sure about attending, but more inclined to go if others are going -- e-mail or call if you're planning to attend.]

For me, the strangest thing about the whole Scott McClellan book controversy is that nobody seems interested in a deep psychological interpretation as to why he’s spilling the beans now.

Democrats don’t seem to be interested in McClellan’s motivations at all: their only question is why he waited so long to tell the “undeniable truth,” when they would have been able to use this information more effectively several years ago to influence political events. Democrats seem to assume that McClellan has seen the light, end of story.

When Republicans ask why McClellan betrayed Bush, after all of his years of apparently loyal service, they answer that it’s an attempt to ingratiate himself to those on the left, or that it’s all about the money.

Inasmuch as simplistic motivations are all components of human self-justification, these are all believeable reasons, as far as they go. But human motivations tend to be multidimensional, especially when they represent a break in character for a previously consistent person.

I submit that McClellan betrayed Bush because Bush betrayed him.

That is, McClellan stuck with Bush for so long because he believes so deeply in personal loyalty, the cardinal virtue of the Bush administration. But McClellan also believes that loyalty is not a hierarchical relationship: that is, he expects loyalty to flow not only from underling to overlord, but from King to Peasant. It’s a feudal relationship, to be sure, but one that offers mutual benefits and protection.

I suspect that McClellan wasn’t bothered by lying for Bush, and for those involved in the Plame scandal. I believe that he would have been willing to do so had he not been lied toкомпютри втора употреба. The disloyalty and lack of trust shown by the administration in not trusting him with the truth was their betrayal of him, and why he has repaid them with his own treachery.

Even then, it seems to me that he might have kept his mouth shut if he’d been provided for. But what exactly has McClellan been doing for the last two years, besides writing his memoir? It doesn’t seem, from my limited research, that he’s been in the pocket of any Washington think-tanks or lobbyists.

So stalwart Bush loyalist McClellan was lied to, and has been left out to twist slowly in the wind for two years. The administration used and abandoned him, despite his unwavering loyalty. Why wouldn’t he respond in kind? There come a point when it becomes clear to even the most trustworthy toady that he’s become disposable, and it’s poor leadership to expect that they’ll remain loyal without mutual aid and comfort.

Last week I returned from Hawaii, and into a whole lot of catch-up at work. I also had to clean up the blog site: although I’d upgraded to WordPress 2.5 already (2.5.1 now), before I’d done so, some nasty stuff had been inserted into one of my blog posts, getting my site branded as an attack site.

Now, that was probably the correct action to take, inasmuch as my site was an attack site during that period of time. But would have been too much to ask to send me mail identifying the problem — or, at least, when I submitted a review request on the site to identify the problem in advance, to avoid a back-and-forth where I fix one problem only to have another one identified before my site status can be returned?

Also, I discovered that my metablog had become stuck, due probably to a prior disk-full condition, and wasn’t posting all of my stuff. Further, del.icio.us changed the RSS feed address, and either I missed it or they didn’t bother to tell me, so that wasn’t showing up, either.

Now that it’s fixed, you can see that I’ve been identifying all of the Mac dive log software. I’ve become interested in getting an air-integrated computer (with hose and console, probably, rather than wireless, due to the substantial cost difference) and tracking my air consumption at depth. I figure that Laura wants to get Nitrox-certified, and as long as I’ll need a new dive computer for that (yes, I will, that’s how old my dive computer is), I might as well track air consumption too and upload log data.

Unfortunately, the list of air-integrated dive consoles that play well with Macs is fairly limited. Suunto and Uwatec would be my only choices. I like what I’ve read about Suunto (though it sounds like the original Cobra, otherwise my best choice, is perhaps overly conservative), but know next to nothing about the Uwatec Smart COM. Reviews and opinions welcome.

A man was talking with me, saying wasn’t it funny, when the Space Age began, people started to see flying saucers, as if the very announcement of the era had summoned the aliens to usher us in.

I said, wouldn’t it have been great if that were true, and flipped on the television.

A voice on the TV talked about the destruction of The Great and Beautiful Things. Horton, who heard a Who, had been crushed to death under one hundred fifty firetrucks. (It had only taken one to do in Morris the Cat.) In retribution, so-and-so filled a house with Jeff Koons art and Velvet Elvis paintings, went out to sea, and brought back a chain of dolphins one hundred fifty miles long to destroy it.

The following is an e-mail I sent to one of my co-workers, heading to Japan. I’m recording it here so that I can find it if I ever need to do so, as the corporate e-mail system has eaten it before. “The Hotel” is the Royal Park Hotel, which is right next to TCAT.

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