Mid-week Items

Winter storm warning today. Wussed out and took the day off work. Items:

• Via A&LD, a review of a book that tells you how to drop references to books you have not read into conversation. I have not read this book.
• Excellent essay on digital rights management, an open letter to Edgar Bronfman. Excerpt: The thing "without logic or merit," Mr. Bronfman, is the idea that everything produced has a value that can only be equated with a dollar sign. You elude to the fact that because LPs, Cassettes, and CDs, (or as you call it the "legacy product") have no piracy protection technology on them, that doesn't mean that their counterpart…the digital file…shouldn't have them. I would like to point out to you that in the past 30 years, with all the Chicken Little antics from your industry over people being able to copy the music they purchased, and share that music with others…your industry did not fail or falter as you predicted. In fact, you've thrived. In 30 years, despite real piracy issues, you've made money hand over fist…and you've been wrong about every single prediction you've ever made. You have no credibility on this subject. And you simply can't blame every slump in music sales on piracy. We don't believe you anymore. While you continue to fight your own customers, your customers continue to create the innovation that keeps you in business.
• I've been watching the PBS series Art: 21 -- Art in the 21st Century lately. The series is very good. Some of the artists I'm like "meh" but some I think are real cool -- For instance, Andrea Zittel, among whose specialties is making the most of confined living spaces, Michael Ray Charles, who was a consultant on the Spike Lee joint Bamboozled, and Maya Lin, best known as creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
  
• This has been up for a couple of weeks, but make sure to browse through the Facets top-movie list for 2006, full of staff favorites. Facets Multi-Media is a Chicago institution -- Arthouse theater, Super-mega video rental store, and releaser of obscure or foreign gems.

More Links...

A few more things that have caught my attention:

• Here's a very large list of palindomes.
• Google gives come-hither to publishers and librarians and now has a new blog specifically for librarians.
• Trends in newspapers moving incorporating blogs into their websites.
• Make sure to visit the Wikipedia store! I'm thinking about getting this coffee mug.
• TCS Daily article on the benefits of a volatile economy. Excerpts: Yes, economic turbulence can yield a kind of psychic unease -- unease that's exploited for political gain. But that same turbulence is also the source of significant beneficent changes. If this is a War on the Middle Class, we should want a troop surge to keep it going... ...Job losses tend to be highly concentrated, making for good media fodder. Just last week an announcement came down that Sprint-Nextel is set to cut 5000 jobs. When was the last time you read about a firm creating 5000 jobs in one stroke? Job creation is more gradual than job loss by comparison, but over time there are more than enough jobs created, and better ones at that.
• Via The Speculist, Must-know Terms for the 21st-Century Intellectuals. Excerpt: First, I am trying to come up with a list of the most fundamental and crucial terms that are coming to define and will soon re-define the human condition, and that subsequently should be known by anyone who thinks of themselves as an intellectual. I admit that there's an elitist and even pompous aspect to this exercise, but the fact of the matter is that the zeitgeist is quickly changing. It's not enough anymore to be able to quote Dostoevsky, Freud and Darwin. This said, while my list of terms is 'required' knowledge, I am not suggesting that it is sufficient. My definition of an 'intellectual' also requires explanation. To me an intellectual in this context is an expert generalist -- a polymath or jack-of-all-trades who sees and understands the Big Picture both past, present and future. While I value and respect the work of specialists, they can be frustratingly out of touch with other disciplines and some of the more broader applications of science, technology and philosophy. Given the obvious truism that nobody can know everything, there is still great value in having individuals understand a diverse set of key principles.