Often when I think I have nothing to write about, I remember. I remember. I remember JA commenting on <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/101205itdoes/">one of my entries</a>:<br>
"It's amazing how you can write 300 words about nothing, and make it seem important."
Everything from Woodrow Wilson to "Houston, we have a problem."
Apparently, unlike high school students, monkeys communicate in complete sentences.
Here's an interesting article about porn as a technical innovator, which is something I've been fascinated by for years—no, I don't mean porn, which seems to confuse almost everything I actually enjoy about sex with simple hydraulics. What I find interesting is that every innovation that Hollywood and the record labels decried as the end of the world was actually embraced by and made mainstream by porn. Video cassettes took movies, dirty and otherwise, out of crappy theaters and into our homes; DVDs improved the audio and video quality of the product, while mainstreaming owning the product; and the Internet made art films (and "art" films) as available in Sioux City and San Francisco. I certainly wouldn't bet against the adult entertainment industry's success at streaming video into the home. Wanna bet that Hollywood ends up with a distribution model more like Vivid's than Blockbuster's?
We've said it before, but Bob Speer says it well—and do go to the links at the end of the article.
<I>Wired</I> has published key documents from the EFF's lawsuit against ATT&T for allegedly cooperating with the NSA'S domestic surveillance program. Former AT&T tech Mark Klein, who outed these documents, also offers his commentary.
Fifty percent of you don't know what that headline is about; the rest of you know I'm talking about the results of eating asparagus.
Well, Elizabeth is off to Italy. Ciao, bella!
<I>Big Rock Candy Mountain</I> ruminates on the immigration issue and posts MP3 files of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" and Billy Bragg's "Waiting For the Great Leap Forward." What a perfect post: Passion, good writin', and great polemics.
I read <I>The San Francisco Gate</I> every morning as part of my my get-ready-to-work ritual, mostly, I admit, for Jon Carroll's fine column, which teaches that wit and grace mean that you don't actually have to have anything to write about (but when he <I>does</I> have something to write about, it's always a corker). Now I've added the link below, which traces the adventures of reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, who had the audacity to break the BALCO juicing scandal.