04w40:2 Lawrence Lessig and the guy who cut off his arm Posted September 29th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 40 number 2 (lawrence lessig and the guy who cut off his arm) ——————————————————————— Our Kids Are in Big Trouble | Lawrence Lessig http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/view.html?pg=5 “But future generations can’t picket. They can’t demand a vote. And the only war on us that they will wage is one of hatred when they recognize what we have done. […] It may always have been like this. I don’t believe in ‘golden age’ histories; the past was not always better than the present. But somehow it seems that we have lost an ethic. When your grandfather spoke of building a better world for you than he knew himself, you believed him. And when you look into the eyes of any 1-year-old child, you may understand what he meant. Which makes it even harder to understand how we’ve become who we are. The Me Generation – which elected the first two presidents to have actively avoided military service (Clinton and Bush) and which will decide this election, too – is in charge, but it has taken its name much too seriously. Gone is the sense of duty that made so compelling Kennedy’s demand ‘ask what you can do for yo ur country.’ We don’t even ask what we, as a nation, can do for our kids. The rhetoric of self-interest so deeply pervades politics that an ideal as fundamental as building a better future has been lost.” Ralston’s choice | Aron Ralston http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,1315388,00.html “I’ve created a mess once again. To brush the dirt off my trapped arm, away from the open wound, I pick up my knife. Sweeping the grit off my thumb, I accidentally gouge myself and rip away a thin piece of decayed flesh. It peels back like a skin of boiled milk before I catch what is going on. I already knew my hand had to be decomposing. Without circulation, it has been dying since I became entrapped. Whenever I considered amputation, it had always been under the premise that the hand was dead and would have to be amputated once I was freed. But I hadn’t known how fast the putrefaction had advanced since Saturday afternoon.” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Wednesday 29 September 2004 @ 10:06 PM
04w40:1 Good Writing Posted September 27th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 40 number 1 (good writing) Of course, the answer to the question, ‘what makes a good read?’ is good writing. And I’ve been told that I’m a good writer, perhaps because somewhere along the way, after reading so much, I picked up a certain confidence through imitation. But I’m also quite conscious of the lessons imparted by Orwell in his 1946 essay, ‘Politics and the English Language’. Reading it within the context of today’s politics makes it seem ahead of its time, surrounded as we are by the flaccid rhetoric of the Bush Administration who tend to oversimplify and obfuscate the complicated truths they so effortlessly deny. At the time that it was written, for anything to make it into print or radio it had to survive the whims of editors, or in the case of political speeches like those of Churchill, still fresh, the taste of voters. It seems important then to revisit this classic essay because while most of us aren’t published in the ‘legacy media’ (as the triumvirate of print, radio, and television are becoming known) we are writing all the time. Email especially is a form of instantaneous publishing (this itself being a great example) most of us deal with everyday, after which comes the blog, that ‘revolution’ people have been freaking out about all year. And as Orwell wrote, better writing means clearer thinking, “and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration”. – Timothy ——————————————————————— Politics and the English Language | George Orwell http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/orwell.htm “Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.” Writing Classic Prose | Denis Dutton http://www.denisdutton.com/clear_and_simple_review.htm “As they explain it, the classic style involves an attitude on the part of the writer toward three key elements: reader, presentation, and truth. First the reader: in the classic style the reader is an equal in a conversation. As a competent, intelligent person, it’s assumed that the reader could take up the other side of the exchange at any moment. While the writer may have access to information the reader does not possess -— indeed, that probably occasions the writing–there is no special authority the classic writer has over the reader. The reader and the classic writer are intellectually symmetrical, with equal competence to assess the relevant understandings of the world presupposed or discussed in classic prose.” The Age of the Essay | Paul Graham http://paulgraham.com/essay.html “The other big difference between a real essay and the things they make you write in school is that a real essay doesn’t take a position and then defend it. […] Good writing should be convincing, certainly, but it should be convincing because you got the right answers, not because you did a good job of arguing. [ …] To understand what a real essay is, we have to reach back into history again, though this time not so far. To Michel de Montaigne, who in 1580 published a book of what he called ‘essais.’ He was doing something quite different from what lawyers do, and the difference is embodied in the name. Essayer is the French verb meaning ‘to try’ and an essai is an attempt. An essay is something you write to try to figure something out.” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Monday 27 September 2004 @ 4:42 PM
04w39:3 History of Typewriters and Television Posted September 23rd, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 39 number 3 (history of typewriters and television) ——————————————————————— Against type? What the writing machine has wrought | Arthur Krystal http://tinyurl.com/452mb “The armada of women who sailed into the workplace just before the turn of the century did not pass unnoticed. For one thing, typewriters began flying out of the factories. In 1900 alone, around 100,000 Remingtons were shipped, and by 1906 the Remington plant was turning out a machine every working minute. […] As for the office itself, men and women suddenly found themselves standing on uncharted terrain, often behind closed doors, which, as it turned out, was a great boon to cartoonists (‘Don’t hold supper, dear. I’ll be working late with my typewriter’), though not much of one to the cuspidor industry, which dried up under the baleful glare of the less expectorating sex. Needless to say, so many women working alongside men–becoming, in fact, indispensable to their male employers–had its civic consequences. Once women began joining the workforce in such numbers, could universal suffrage and an Equal Rights Amendment be far behind?” Beck’s Typewriter | Stefan Beck http://www.stefan.becks.ch/sammlung.html A gallery of images of early typewriters The Televisionary | Malcolm Gladwell http://gladwell.com/2002/2002_05_27_a_televisionary.htm “It was then that the sewing-machine business took off. For the sewing machine to succeed, in other words, those who saw themselves as sewing-machine inventors had to swallow their pride and concede that the machine was larger than they were – that groups, not individuals, invent complex technologies. […] Farnsworth was twenty-four, and working out of a ramshackle building. Sarnoff was one of the leading industrialists of his day. It was as if Bill Gates were to get in his private jet and visit a software startup in a garage across the country. But Farnsworth wasn’t there. He was in New York, trapped there by a court order resulting from a frivolous lawsuit filed by a shady would-be investor. Stashower calls this one of the great missed opportunities of Farnsworth’s career, because he almost certainly would have awed Sarnoff with his passion and brilliance, winning a lucrative licensing deal. Instead, an unimpressed Sarnoff made a token offer of a hundred thousand dollars for Farnsworth’s patents, and Farnsworth dismissed the offer out of hand. This, too, is a reason that inventors ought to work for big corporations: big corporations have legal departments to protect their employees against being kept away from their laboratories by frivolous lawsuits. A genius is a terrible thing to waste.” —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Thursday 23 September 2004 @ 1:06 AM
04w39:2 Bush-Bashing Posted September 22nd, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 39 number 2 (bush-bashing) On Wednesday September 22nd , CBC’s morning radio program The Current analyzed the “Bush Bashing” phenomenon, noting among other things that 7,435 anti-Bush books have been published. A link to an archived Real Audio stream of the conversation is provided below. – Timothy ——————————————————————— Bush-Bashing | The Current http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/media/200409/20040922thecurrent_sec3.ram Real Audio File, 28:00 —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Wednesday 22 September 2004 @ 11:49 PM
04w39:1 Marshall McLuhan and Malcom Gladwell Posted September 20th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 39 number 1 (marshall mcluhan and malcolm gladwell) Having gotten a better vintage copy of “Understanding Media”, one of the books I tried to sell at the used bookstore in the spring of 1999 was my other copy. They wouldn’t take it because they were well stocked. After I left the store, I ran into some acquaintances on the next block and we struck up a chat. I handed my McLuhan to one of them saying, “here take it, it’s a good read”. Now that they’re gearing up for a big McLuhan festival here in Toronto next month, I was inclined to visit the McLuhan files on the CBC Archives site, which are wonderful. They require Windows Media Player 9 (available here for OSX) and a good bandwidth. Since McLuhan’s study was the difference between “print man” and the electronic creature, I’ve included an article written by Malcolm Gladwell on “the social life of paper”. – Timothy ——————————————————————— Marshall McLuhan, the Man and his Message | CBC Archives http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-74-342/people/mcluhan/ “He was a man of idioms and idiosyncrasies, deeply intelligent and a soothsayer. He had prescient knowledge of the Internet. Although educated in literature, Marshall McLuhan was known as a pop philosopher because his theories applied to mini-skirts and the twist. For his ability to keep up with the cutting edge, one colleague called him ‘The Runner.’ Critics said he destroyed literary values. Today, McLuhanÂ’s ideas are new again, applied to the electronic media that he predicted.” The Wisdom of Saint Marshall, the Holy Fool | Gary Wolf http://tinyurl.com/lihn “By the time of his death, he had been dismissed by respectable academicians, and he was known in the popular press as an eccentric intellectual whose day in the media spotlight had come and gone. By 1980, the transformation of human life catalyzed by television was taken for granted, and it no longer seemed interesting to ask where the electronic media were taking us. But in recent years, the explosion of new media – particularly the Web – has caused new anxieties. Or to put a more McLuhanesque spin on it, the advent of new digital media has brought the conditions of the old technologies into sharper relief, and made us suddenly conscious of our media env ironment. In the confusion of the digital revolution, McLuhan is relevant again.” Article Date: January 1996 The Social Life of Paper | Malcolm Gladwell http://gladwell.com/2002/2002_03_25_a_paper.htm “Dewey’s principal business was something called the Library Bureau, which was essentially the Office Depot of his day, selling card catalogues, cabinets, office chairs and tables, pre-printed business forms, and, most important, filing cabinets. Previously, businessmen had stored their documents in cumbersome cases, or folded and labelled the pieces of paper and stuck them in the pigeonholes of the secretary desks so common in the Victorian era. What Dewey proposed was essentially an enlarged version of a card catalogue, where paper documents hung vertically in long drawers. The vertical file was a stunning accomplishment. In those efficiency-obsessed days, it prompted books and articles and debates and ended up winning a gold medal at the 1893 World’s Fair, because it so neatly addressed the threat of disorder posed by the proliferation of paper. What good was that railroad schedule, after all, if it was lost on someone’s desk? Now a railroad could buy one of Dewey’s vertical filing cabinets, and put the schedule under ‘S,’ where everyone could find it.” —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Monday 20 September 2004 @ 1:33 PM
04w38:1 Art vs. Design Posted September 18th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 38 number 1 (art vs. design) ——————————————————————— Real Art | Peter Bagge http://www.reason.com/0408/bagge.shtml “Mr. Grumpy Goes to an art museum and comes out belaboring the obvious […] Rather than try to ‘teach’ people to appreciate art that has no meaning or relevance to their lives, we should instead be marvelling at the countless inspired man-made objects that litteraly surround us, both inside and outside our own homes. So who needs modern art museums? !?” [Online comic] The graphic grab | Rick Poynor http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1291320,00.html “Valli isn’t alone in believing that the intense visual pleasures offered by graphic culture are beginning to usurp the place of fine art. In recent years, many artists have emphasised the conceptual, rather than the aesthetic, content of their work. Design, on the other hand, has often been unashamedly retinal, intent on creating a new visual form. […] Both Anderson and Valli argue that it is graphic culture, not art, that reflects the mentality and concerns of our time. Graphic expression connects with people because its fundamental purpose is communication, and this applies to even the most esoteric forms of message-making, such as TDR’s. If it doesn’t communicate, it fails. ‘I don’t think contemporary art is ever going to come back,’ says Valli. ‘The people who are going to change things visually are people who are working in a more graphic way. As art installations became more three-dimensional and conceptual, graphic designers just took over.’ If we were to remake Robert Hughes’s Shock Of The New documentary in 30 years’ time, Valli suggests, its focus would be graphic culture. ” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Monday 13 September 2004 @ 3:24 PM
04w38:4 Yo Rummy! Posted September 16th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 38 number 4 (yo rummy!) The Fuck New York video which I sent a link to in 0435:1 is one of the most brilliant things I’ve seen all summer and easily will make this year’s top ten list. Since it’s that good I’m obviously not the only one out there who thinks so. Hiphopmusic.com reporter Irina Slutsky got an interview with the filmmakers, the link to which is posted below. – Timothy ——————————————————————— The Guys Behind The “F*** New York” Video | Irina Slutsky http://www.hiphopmusic.com/archives/000651.html “If we saw one more poster with a fist on it, in stark black/white contrast, telling me to go fight whatever, I was gonna puke. We feel like protesting needs to be fun and have some sex appeal. We want to get younger people involved. In the 1960s, a lot of people were getting laid for protesting – not that we’re getting laid cuz of this movie – (laughs) But protesting is a way to align like minded individuals. […] These kids are punk-ass young republican prep school kids. We wanted to have a next generation of Republicans shown as the antithesis of the people we want to reach. […] Throwing in the fact that the kids are these thugged out individuals is showing that the whole Bush family is the most thugged-out crew in the world. We wanted to write it the way kids tal k on the street. ” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Thursday 16 September 2004 @ 12:44 PM
04w38:3 Digital Old School Cool Posted September 15th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 38 number 3 (digital old school cool) ——————————————————————— Made to Order | Clive Thompson http://www.slate.com/id/2105436/ “Dustin Smith loved DJing at his friends’ parties, but his MP3-filled computer just wasn’t rugged or portable enough to haul across town. When Smith found a vintage OshKosh makeup case, a light went off. After buying a bunch of electronics components and making a zillion trips t o the hardware store, he was done: Smith had crammed an entire computer inside the retro case. ‘There’s a real design aesthetic to it,’ he says, ‘but I also wanted something really functional.’ When I first saw Smith’s tricked-out machine, I immediately wanted one to call my own. The makeup-case computer is an example of a ‘casemod,’ a modification of an interesting shell—a coffee maker, a typewriter, a chrome box—so that a computer fits inside.” A Digital Generation’s Analog Chic | Juliet Chung http://tinyurl.com/6ss8e “‘I wanted the biggest cellphone I could find,’ said Mr. Auh, a 27-year-old investment manager in Philadelphia. His winning bid of $25.95 bought a Motorola DynaTac, a 1980’s-era ‘brick’ cellphone that fits more comfortably in a backpack than in a suit pocket. […] While his attraction to digital relics may seem unusual, Mr. Auh is part of what appears to be a gr owing group of 20-somethings embracing yesterday’s designs. These fans of retro technology are using ingenuity to find or fashion the perfect cellphones, gaming systems and computer cases – in effect ushering back a time they experienced only barely, if at all. ” —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Wednesday 15 September 2004 @ 11:41 PM
04w38:2 Creative Bush Craziness x2 Posted September 15th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 38 number 2 (creative bush craziness x2) The thing about running a mailing list is that people hate spam. So ISP’s and servers go through all this effort to help reduce the efforts of American and African businesspeople. Which means that sometimes your messages to friends and family and people who want on your list just don’t get through. Running a list means that you also sometimes have “problems with the server” as technical people working with the machines between you and the recipient try to deal with issues surrounding spam. Not that I’m saying this is spam nor that the problems were my fault! (Goodreads does not what to be considered synonymous with faux-meat products so please take advantage of the link to unsubscribe in each message if you would rather not get these anymore). So yesterday, I had “problems with the server” and I’ve been told it’s been fixed, and which means that some of you (I think) are getting this for the first time while others are getting it twice, only this note is new. But the one below isn’t:Both these posts come via Mark Federman’s What is the Message? weblog at the U of T McLuhan Centre. – Timothy ——————————————————————— Bush vs. Jesus | Mad Magazine http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/09/bush-vs-jesus.html What if W was runnin’ against his homeboy in the sky? George Bush sings ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ | rx http://www.audiostreet.net/artists/006/407/song_sunday_bloody_sunday.html the ironic joys of sampling —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Wednesday 15 September 2004 @ 11:35 PM
04w38:2 Creative Bush Craziness Posted September 15th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 38 number 2 (creative bush craziness) Both these posts come via Mark Federman’s What is the Message? weblog at the U of T McLuhan Centre. – Timothy ——————————————————————— Bush vs. Jesus | Mad Magazine http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/09/bush-vs-jesus.html What if W was runnin’ against his homeboy in the sky? George Bush sings ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ | rx http://www.audiostreet.net/artists/006/407/song_sunday_bloody_sunday.html the ironic joys of sampling —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Wednesday 15 September 2004 @ 1:44 AM
