Thursday, December 30, 2004
Honeymoon Rain Delay
Y'all-Just wanted to send a quick word from the Island of Kaua'i. Steph and I got hitched officially on December 26th in Lincoln, NM, then spent the next two days getting here. So far this is our third day on the ground. The second full day. Tuesday was jetlag city. Went to bed by 8:30. Went golfing yesterday and noticed that my score was proportional to the beauty surrounding us. Needless to say I shot 51 on the front nine and didn't bother to count on the back. Today, the whole island is getting rained out, so we took the car for a little ride around looking for anything cheap. State parks are coated with clouds. The roads and people are pleasant and easy going. As for provisions, nothing here comes cheap except sushi. We'll come home with soy-dipped fingertips and wasabi breath both.
Taking buttloads of photos and video here. Hope I can get back online at the hotel to share some with you all. As fate would have it, the Aloha spirit is taking its toll on my ambition for email though, so I can only promise to try. Fitting in more communiques from the north shore wonderland we inhabit for the week is competing with smooches from the bride and mai tai's on the bay.
Mele Kalikimaka and Happy New Year.
Mahalo!
K
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Rationale of the Nerds
"I know a lot of people who were nerds in school, and they all tell the same story: There is a strong correlation between being smart and being a nerd, and an even stronger inverse correlation between being a nerd and being popular. Being smart seems to make you unpopular.Why? The answer, I think, is that most smart kids don't really want to be popular.
If someone had told me that at the time, I would have laughed at him. Being unpopular in school makes kids miserable, some so miserable that they commit suicide. Telling me that I didn't want to be popular would have seemed like telling someone dying of thirst in a desert that he didn't want a glass of water. Of course I wanted to be popular.
But, in fact, I didn't - not enough. There was something else I wanted more: to be smart. Not simply to do well in school, though that counted for something, but to design beautiful rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. In general, to make great things."
Link
GNH: Gross National Happiness
"True, the federal government maintains a $2 billion, 10,000-person statistical apparatus to track the blips and dips of our national well-being. But here's the problem: The current economic gauges don't tell us enough about how the economy is really doing. And just as important, how the economy is doing no longer tells us enough about how the nation is really doing."Wired: The True Measure of Success
Monday, December 06, 2004
On Language: Narrative
On Language: Narrative by William Saffire, talks about how language in the elections controls perception and, as a consequence, the US. When the Times quotes Barthes on Page 1, you know you're in for a ride. Good reading here.
Saturday, December 04, 2004
Friday, December 03, 2004
Flickr == Web 2.0b
Globetechnology: Flickr offers snapshot of where the Web's headed
Filmmaking By the Masses
"Economists like to say that property rights are needed to fosterinnovation. But the evidence is piling up in one field after
another that property rights have gotten so extensive that they
are choking new creativity. The latest example comes from the
world of filmmaking. A new report by Patricia Aufderheide and
Peter Jaszi of American University documents how the rights
clearance process is crippling the creativity of documentary
filmmakers. The report – 'Untold Stories: Creative Consequences
of Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers' – draws
upon interviews with 45 directors, editors and producers. The
report finds that filmmakers must often make significant changes
in their work because of the costs or complications of rights
clearances. (A short film, available online, also explains the
problems described in the report.)"
Link
