Listics

pentecost by Regina Coupar

			    when the Spirit	touches us	we become changed

	the new wine	which is poured	into each of us	by the Spirit of God	changes the vessel 	which holds it

	where we were empty	we become filled        where we are dead	we are brought to life

	where we were afraid	we are afraid no more

That ping from within… in which Madame refuses to Google, preferring to contact her inner database.  Bukowski makes an appearance.  "Grandmother" is used as a slur.  And "cookie" is spelled like "sam donaldson and…"

I like getting off airplanes with my earphones on and just bopping down the concourse feeling good.  Thank you Mr. iPod guy.  And thank you too David Dodd…

"Uncle John’s Band"

Words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia
Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission

Well, the first days are the hardest days,
don’t you worry anymore
When life looks like Easy Street
there is danger at your door
Think this through with me
Let me know your mind
Wo-oah, what I want to know
is are you kind?

It’s a Buck Dancer’s Choice, my friend,
better take my advice
You know all the rules by now
and the fire from the ice
Will you come with me?
Won’t you come with me?
Wo-oah, what I want to know,
will you come with me?

Goddamn, well I declare
Have you seen the like?
Their walls are built of cannonballs,
their motto is Don’t Tread on Me
Come hear Uncle John’s Band
by the riverside
Got some things to talk about
here beside the rising tide

It’s the same story the crow told me
It’s the only one he know -
like the morning sun you come
and like the wind you go
Ain’t no time to hate,
barely time to wait
Wo-oah, what I want to know,
where does the time go?

I live in a silver mine
and I call it Beggar’s Tomb
I got me a violin
and I beg you call the tune
Anybody’s choice
I can hear your voice
Wo-oah what I want to know,
how does the song go?

Come hear Uncle John’s Band
by the riverside
Come with me or go alone
He’s come to take his children home
Come hear Uncle John’s Band
playing to the tide
Come on along or go alone
he’s come to take his children home

On Tuesday Corante hosts a Symposium on Social Architecture.  The excitement begins Monday evening with a tour of the Degas exhibit.  After that, who knows?

"Social architecture," something about bees and anthills perhaps, although I know little about entomology.  We expect wasps to be there of course, and short, middle-aged striving academic careerists, as well as tall and venturesome representatives of the eleemosynary elite.  I’m hoping to meet Zephyr Teachout face-to-face and to add her photograph to my collection of "the Babes of Berkman."

In truth, I seem to always be walking a few paces off the sidewalk at these events, but I’m a writer and I seem to be finally getting the hang of voicing a contrarian opinion without turning it into a self-righteous rant.

I’m perhaps more interested in IP v.6 than I am in YASN, and if Leah or Alex would comp me, I’d be in Reston in December even if I had to crawl.  The social software scene seems to have reached the involutional level of depressing double speak with the introduction of tools like Eurekster… a tagging program that allows you to spin your own sense of what’s what and to keep visitors spiraling inward on your site with never another outbound link to trouble you with loss of sticky eyeballs.  It’s where web 2.0 does battle with web 1.0 and loses. 

But for all the resistance I’m feeling tonight, I’m really looking forward to getting my mind around what the people who will be presenting have to offer.  And I’m looking forward to writing about it.

(Bravo to Dr. W. for pointing to the brief Lessig post in Wired…)

Lessig’s comments on the Authors Guild brouhaha around Google Print and copyright are of the "let’s you and him fight" variety and to be expected from a lawyer trained in the adversarial arts. Certainly if Google was a mom and pop scannery making indexed versions of print publications available under fair use provisions of the copyright law, the Authors Guild would not have seen value in a lawsuit (though arguably they may have chilled mom and pop right out of business with the threat).  Lessig would like to see Google defend their right to scan printed matter and make indexed information of copyrighted textual work available within the fair use guidelines of American copyright law.  He seems to be afraid that they will reach a settlement with their antagonists and that the matter will be resolved without the ritual opening of purses to the Knights of the bar.

I want Google’s work to continue more than I care about the legal jousting.  Google’s project has been underway for about two years.  They have a program for publishers, a program that should protect the rights of authors.  Google is "partnering" with four universities and the New York Public Library to digitize a lot of books.  If it was strictly a cash and carry contractual relationship, a project with libraries paying a scanning and indexing company a fee for service, then the complexities of fear associated with the newly risen corporate monolith of Search would be easily dismissed.  But since Google is a full partner whose shareholders have interests in some ways orthogonal to the libraries users’ interests, the matter is more complicated than Larry Lessig allows.

(Disclosure:  I’m a bit of a socialist with a desire to draw a bright line between private commerce and public concerns.  Schools, libraries, and access to information on the net are public concerns.) 

All Levy all the time…

I
need an anvil.

From Madame Levy…

Roast
saddle of hare with port-glazed endive, green peppercorns and tarte fine of
celeriac

threw her
well-manicured hands up in the air last week and declared that today’s brainy
and powerful women can’t get a man

 

men, he
explained, prefer women who are malleable and awed

‘It took
only a few decades to create a brazen new world where the highest ideal is to
acknowlege your inner slut.’

From Halley Suitt…

This was a lovely place where I had a lovely meal.  I won’t even tell you what was great on the menu, since EVERYTHING was. 

I had rabbit … which I LOVE!

… in each other’s cross hairs?

Whose work makes me despair of measuring up.  Thanx for Chapter Ten and I hope you don’t pull it.

And thanx to RB, botanist in his own write, for pointing it out first to me today, although I certainly would have been there sooner or later, probably sooner