All the same, we should probably go dutch.
Note from the past week: Guys, I appreciate that you come to DC to march and are unfamiliar with the Metro. But even if you were home at the mall, it would still be rude to stand at the top of the escalator. Thank you!
Dessa, A Badly Broken Code: Much love for this album. “And it’s just not true that I’m a man-eater; all the same, we should probably go dutch.” Cheaper on Amazon than on iTunes for the whole album.
J.A. Konrath, Origin: Cheap ebook thriller that did what I wanted-the U.S. government has a monster locked in an underground bunker. When it wakes up, it claims to be the Devil. Hijinks (and a side order of romance between a linguist and a doctor) ensue. Brisk and shallow; value for money.
Steven Johnson, The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America: A sort of biography of Joseph Priestley, an 18th-century English scientist/theologian who was also involved in politics, and a frequent correspondent with several key Founding Fathers. Priestley was important to the beginning of modern chemistry, though he kept a belief in phlogiston to the end of his life. I found the story a little disappointing, because Johnson kept wanting to go beyond biography-which is fine-to really global theories, which his story did not sustain. E.g., he argued that the explosion of scientific achievement in England and France was all about the release of stored energy (peat, coal, etc.) which allowed the creation of leisure. Not that I don’t find that a respectable thesis, but stitching it into a biography leaves not enough time for either global theory or biography. Johnson’s lack of interest in Priestley’s religious thinking was particularly noticeable: though Johnson argues that Priestley represents a person no longer possible to moderns-someone at the center of scientific, religious, and political innovation at the same time-he spends essentially no time explaining what was religiously innovative about Priestley’s thinking or how it differed from that of his main opponents in the field.
Modernism and Copyright, ed. Paul Saint-Amour: Somewhat eclectic but engaging coverage of the relationship of literary modernism, with some detours into music, and copyright law, from modernism’s relationship with borrowing to issues of fair use of modernist works given the (ironic/hypocritical) hypercontrolling stances of various authors’ estates.
The Next Digital Decade: Essays on the Future of the Internet (ed. Berin Szoka & Adam Marcus): free download available. A good survey of a certain segment of thinking about the internet, with some big names represented (Yochai Benkler, Jonathan Zittrain, Tim Wu) condensing and de-footnoting things they’ve said elsewhere. Largely antiregulatory in its thrust, with occasional representatives of other views. The free market can fix anything! Even bad regulations or at least cross border regulatory conflicts. Key quote: “Insofar as collective governance is necessary and unavoidable, a denationalized liberalism strives to make Internet users and suppliers an autonomous, global polity, with what might be called neodemocratic rights to representation and participation in these new global governance institutions. ...Such a liberalism is not interested, however, in using global governance institutions to redistribute wealth.” Whew. I was a little worried for a second there.
No one but Ann Bartow seems aware that Kathy Sierra exists, likewise that internet freedom works differently for different people. The authors mostly think that individuals need no non-market help navigating complex products offered by sophisticated businesses; the only entities that can fool consumers are non-businesses with their crafty non-businessy agendas: “During the last few years, Facebook has repeatedly landed in trouble for its mostly-admirable efforts to craft a working privacy regime for its now 500 million users. The generally poor response to these efforts, I think, stems from a growing privacy paranoia fueled by the media and governments….”
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Dessa, A Badly Broken Code: Much love for this album. “And it’s just not true that I’m a man-eater; all the same, we should probably go dutch.” Cheaper on Amazon than on iTunes for the whole album.
J.A. Konrath, Origin: Cheap ebook thriller that did what I wanted-the U.S. government has a monster locked in an underground bunker. When it wakes up, it claims to be the Devil. Hijinks (and a side order of romance between a linguist and a doctor) ensue. Brisk and shallow; value for money.
Steven Johnson, The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America: A sort of biography of Joseph Priestley, an 18th-century English scientist/theologian who was also involved in politics, and a frequent correspondent with several key Founding Fathers. Priestley was important to the beginning of modern chemistry, though he kept a belief in phlogiston to the end of his life. I found the story a little disappointing, because Johnson kept wanting to go beyond biography-which is fine-to really global theories, which his story did not sustain. E.g., he argued that the explosion of scientific achievement in England and France was all about the release of stored energy (peat, coal, etc.) which allowed the creation of leisure. Not that I don’t find that a respectable thesis, but stitching it into a biography leaves not enough time for either global theory or biography. Johnson’s lack of interest in Priestley’s religious thinking was particularly noticeable: though Johnson argues that Priestley represents a person no longer possible to moderns-someone at the center of scientific, religious, and political innovation at the same time-he spends essentially no time explaining what was religiously innovative about Priestley’s thinking or how it differed from that of his main opponents in the field.
Modernism and Copyright, ed. Paul Saint-Amour: Somewhat eclectic but engaging coverage of the relationship of literary modernism, with some detours into music, and copyright law, from modernism’s relationship with borrowing to issues of fair use of modernist works given the (ironic/hypocritical) hypercontrolling stances of various authors’ estates.
The Next Digital Decade: Essays on the Future of the Internet (ed. Berin Szoka & Adam Marcus): free download available. A good survey of a certain segment of thinking about the internet, with some big names represented (Yochai Benkler, Jonathan Zittrain, Tim Wu) condensing and de-footnoting things they’ve said elsewhere. Largely antiregulatory in its thrust, with occasional representatives of other views. The free market can fix anything! Even bad regulations or at least cross border regulatory conflicts. Key quote: “Insofar as collective governance is necessary and unavoidable, a denationalized liberalism strives to make Internet users and suppliers an autonomous, global polity, with what might be called neodemocratic rights to representation and participation in these new global governance institutions. ...Such a liberalism is not interested, however, in using global governance institutions to redistribute wealth.” Whew. I was a little worried for a second there.
No one but Ann Bartow seems aware that Kathy Sierra exists, likewise that internet freedom works differently for different people. The authors mostly think that individuals need no non-market help navigating complex products offered by sophisticated businesses; the only entities that can fool consumers are non-businesses with their crafty non-businessy agendas: “During the last few years, Facebook has repeatedly landed in trouble for its mostly-admirable efforts to craft a working privacy regime for its now 500 million users. The generally poor response to these efforts, I think, stems from a growing privacy paranoia fueled by the media and governments….”
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.