First World Problems

Sometimes living in Madison has been tough - with my frequent absences due to travel, it's sometimes hard to fill up the time when I'm in town, espeically weekdays  (not to mention the exhaustion that sometimes leaves me without energy to do Another Thing). This summer, though, has been different, and yesterday I had to choose between two wonderful events.

Maybe this sounds silly, but it really stressed me out that things didn't sync up well and I had to juke one group. And that - that stress - is a wonderful problem to have; I was able to note down a song AND won both games I joined later that night (though with some guilt for all the lying I did for one of the victories). I like my friends. :)

Goodbye, Google Reader

"From your 145 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 4,712 items, clicked 190 items, starred 0 items, and emailed 1 items. Since August 27, 2009 you have read a total of 161,244 items."

I started using Reader as a college junior. It permanently changed my information consumption and use by making it possible for me to store up and consume data whenever I had time. I use it to find posts to make myself, on this blog and on my own RSS feed of interesting article. Here are the replacements I've considered:

• The Old Reader - it works, but slow updates and the interface isn't pretty
• Curata - no way to show unread
• Feed.ly - ok, but only works on my modern laptop and I can't figure out how to click throuhg efficiently.
• Digg Reader - no way to show unread
• AOL Reader - no access yet
• Newsblur - I like this one the most, and am currently paying $2/month for it. For something that I spend hours on, its well worth my time.

Ultimately, I'll keep trying out The Old Reader and Newsblur. I think the winner will be one of these. For now, I'll miss Google Reader's analytics, seen below. Do note that these are based on my computer's local time, so things read on the west coast at midnght show here as 2 AM. :)

The Soundtrack to the Social Network

Is my next work-related music thing.

Call Your Girlfriend

I sing with some talented ladies:

An Olympic Memory

Atlanta hosted the Olympics in 1996, back when the budgets for them weren’t quite so gigantic, and they needed kids to be a part of the opening ceremonies. A letter came out in our backpacks one day, and while I don’t remember this clearly, my parents and teacher all recall how immediately intent I was on being a part of it. Practice, rehearsals - I think I figured out it was a special thing and immediately asked to go. Well, they ran a lottery for the slots and my friends Anna and Parker (and maybe some others?) won places. I didn’t, but my enthusiasm got me noticed, and thanks to some fortune, I had an opportunity to join up.

I don’t remember much, but a few things stick out. Riding on the bus next to Anna when we went to pick her sister up at another elementary school I had never been to before, and listening to the people on the big platform constructed on the seats in the stadium as they directed us. Hot days under the sun at high schools practicing our places, the envy I had of the kid that just had to stand on a guide dot. The chaotic day they took away the dots - and the amazing smoothness of the second run-through when we realized we still knew where to go. I remember the seemingly giant tunnels under the stadium in my seven year old eyes,  the embarrassment of changing into my costume in a small space with all of these moms everywhere, leaving the stadium through the firework zone while they were going off - and watching one hit the driveway in front of us, and then getting home while the parade of nations was still going on. The sadness when I didn’t get a flashlight for our closing ceremony number, and the excitement when I watched the X gamers practice their craft by the stadium.

But most of all I remember the feeling of running out of our tunnel and seeing the infinite stars of camera flashes around the stadium, the likes of which we’ll likely never see thanks to the modern smarkphone. There was also a little thought in the back of my head that I enjoyed - “I could just run THAT way and the entire world would see me!” - but did not heed. I remember the sounds of John Williams, our accompaniment to so many hours of making our dove flap. And it all happened because of enthusiasm.

One Last Thought on the NSA/Facebook

The data we put on Facebook isn't all "ours" - the internet isn't ours. Facebook has control over the data I enter there, and we have a free market choice to use Facebook knowing that. We're going into an era where the social contract of community via the internet will require a "voluntary" abridgment of rights, unless we either choose platforms that won't share data or radically curtail the gov'ts collection abilities. I think the former impossible because of economics, and the latter because of politics.

 

This isn't 1984 - it's Brave New World, but instead of Soma, we have cat videos.

 

For the sake of time, here's Peggy Noonan representing my view:

From her blog:

...Because of the built-in bias in the system—the bias to do too much, to go too far—the creation of an invasive American surveillance state is probably inevitable. Politicians are people who can do math. The number of people who want to be safe, they are certain, is far greater than the number worried about abstract issues of privacy. Moreover, they figure voters are more or less like this: They’ll have their little blog debates about privacy right up until a bomb goes off, and then they’ll all go into a swivet and join a new chorus: “Why didn’t you protect me? Throw the bums out!”

There is no way a government in the age of metadata, with the growing capacity to listen, trace, tap, track and read, will not eventually, and even in time systematically, use that power wrongly, maliciously, illegally and in areas for which the intelligence gathering was never intended. People are right to fear that the government’s surveillance power will be abused. It will be. There are many reasons for this, but the primary one is that humans are and will be in charge of it, and humans have shown throughout history a bit of a tendency to play every trick and bend and break laws. “If men were angels,” as James Madison wrote, limits, checks, balances and specifically protected rights would not be necessary. But they aren’t angels. Add to all this simple human mistakes, innocent and not, and misjudgments. And add to that sheer human craziness, partisan lust, political mischief of all sorts.

In which I discuss Game of Thrones

Not entertainment or the arena
Storytelling
Deaths back then
Stillborn
The good are predictable
Violence is horrible
Choices have consequences

I stayed away from Game of Thrones until this year - enough people were talking about it that I decided to get into the series one weekend and, a half-embarrassingly short time later, I've read large parts of books 1-3 and caught up on the series.

First, some accolades: this is a show that keeps us interested and engaged with just tidbits of various characters from episode to episode. A few weeks back, the show was tracking storylines at 10 different locations, as represented here in a spoil-free list that will make sense to show fans. We're blessed by writers that can accomplish exposition rapidly - and have much more screentime thanks to HBO's commercial-free nature then other hour-long dramas.

• Dragon Lady
• Wolf King
• Wolf Girl
• Wolf Cripple
• Stag Legit King
• Lion / Sapphire
• Crow / Wildling
• Crow / Mother
• Tortured Squid
• The Capitol (Mockingbird, Spider, Lions, Roses, Wolf)

The next praise-worthy bit is how much the show can establish and humanize characters for us, even while it seems like every episode features someone dying, prompting tweets like:

“Why doesn’t George R.R. Martin use twitter? Because he killed all 140 characters.”

What does the show not get right? For one thing, it relies on actors (espeically women actors) that are too uniformly attractive - and who remove their clothing too much. For a show that relies on efficiency, these scenes mull slowly along close body-shots that seem to serve no other purpose than titillation.

However, on the other area of debate, I'm rather understanding of the gore in the show. Martin's deaths - all of them - have a point, and a role in establishing a rule that in this universe of Westeros - NO ONE is safe. Not the protagonist, not the hero, not the child, not the one who must avenge. There was plenty more story to be told about our friendly Starks - but George R. R. Martin wants us to follow him over the bodies of these beloved characters, and the show's efforts to show us what felled them is in the pursuit of accuracy - and a warning about the kind of world that has existed in the purges of Mao and Stalin. Tens of thousands - millions - have died for lesser crimes than shown on their show. We would do well to remember that.

South Dakota

Sometimes, you don't have to plan.

I have a wonderful job that involves lots of timelines, reports, notes, follow-ups, and other myriad tools of project management. I like my job, but sometimes its nice just to do something without a lot of planning - and to have it all work out anyway. This weekend was one of those moments. Ever since I heard about it, I felt pretty strongly about getting myself to the Taize gathering in Red Shirt, Pine Ridge Reservation.

First, I have never been to that area of the country - and never to a true reservation. Second, it's been a little while since I camped and it's always nice to get a small reminder of the joy of regular showers

But mostly, I was looking for the Taize spirit. I know of no other group that has such a welcome openness among so many, from such disparate backgrounds.

However, there was a catch - I didn't exactly figure out how I was getting there. My thought had been to ride with Chicago folks, but the connections were light and the buses full. So I found myself googling for other rides and resources - and on Wednesday, I found a bus leaving from Minneapolis, a cool 4.5 hours from Madison.

So right after work on Thursday, I got on the road with a audio book of "The girl with the dragon tattoo" and headed to the bus. The people were kind, friendly, and pretty much all new to Taize. That didn't make them newbies, or lacking in experience, but perhaps there was a confidence difference

I had some idea of what I was getting myself into, and they were coming on the strength of the recommendations of others, or simply a Memorial Day whim.

Talent is everywhere

David Foster Wallace on life and education (profound)

The Luck of the Listserve

The Luck of the Listserve:

The Listserve brings online strangers together in an era oversaturated with friends
[...]
The Lottery of Babylon began innocently enough. It was a game, created by venal merchants, played by commoners, and its rules were simple: tempt fate, win silver coins. But as it evolved, it took on moral dimensions, dark corners, and ecclesiastical force. Although it will take a few billion more adherents to even begin chasing this mystical essence, we have a Lottery of Babylon among us today. It’s called the Listserve.
The Listserve is a mailing list lottery. Sign up for the Listserve, and you’re joining a massive e-mail list. Every day, one person from the list is randomly selected to write one e-mail to everyone else. That’s it. As of this writing, the Listserve has 21,399 subscribers. There has been one email per day since April 16th, 2012. Run by a group of Masters Candidates in NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), the Listserve emerged from a class exploring new ways of creating conversational spaces online. There were other ideas: chain letters, or a message board for only 100 people at a time. But eventually email’s directness and ease-of-use won out. An email flies straight, circumventing the myriad distractions of other online gatherings, where some voices pack disproportionate clout (or, er, Klout)...............