Culture
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We’re all going to need clothes
In the physical world we know what privacy is and how it works. We know because we have worked out privacy technologies and norms over thousands of years. Without them we wouldn’t have civilization. Doors and windows are privacy technologies. So are clothes. So are manners respecting the intentions behind our own and others’ use of those things. Those manners… Continue reading
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Listening to Serial? Remember the West Memphis Three.
On Saturday I invited Serial listeners to recall the Edgar Smith case. Smith got away, literally, with murder. He did it by convincing the media and the public (and to a lesser degree the courts) that he was innocent man, falsely convicted of brutally killing a teenage girl. After he was released he attempted another… Continue reading
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How Radio Can Defend the Dashboard
Dash — “the connected car audiotainment™ conference” — is happening next week in Detroit. It’s a big deal, because cars are morphing into digital things as well as automotive ones. This means lots of new stuff is crowding onto dashboard spaces where radios alone used to live. This is a big deal for radio, since most listening… Continue reading
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#10books that changed my life
There’s a challenge going around Facebook: to name ten books that have changed your life. So I’ve thought about my own, and kept a running list here in draft form. Now that it’s close enough to publish, methinks, here they are, in no order, and not limited to ten (or to Facebook) — War and… Continue reading
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Frontiers of Typicality
Dear Student Name, Your Remarkable Candidate Application for admission to Uncanny Valley University is already mostly done. Click here to see. We’ve pre-filled lots of stuff to make sure you get a personalized application experience. And, your Remarkable Candidate status also qualifies you to get these Remarkable Advantages: No essay (we’ve written that for you too) Some kind of scholarship Short cut to… Continue reading
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A visit to the old ‘hood
A couple weeks ago I took a walk around the historic neighborhood in Fort Lee where my extended family had a home — 2063 Hoyt Avenue — from the turn of the last century into the 1950s. It’s where my parents lived when I was born, and where my aunt and grandmother sat for my sister and… Continue reading
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Rediscovering Junkie John, Tim Dawe and Penrod after 40 years
I used to have an open reel tape of song I recorded off some New York FM station in 1970 or so. It’s long lost now. I didn’t know the artist or the title. It was was half talked, half sung, about a loser in Greenwich Village, “Junkie John,” coming down in a fleabag hotel.… Continue reading
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Snow on the Water
I’ve been intrigued by Fotopedia since it showed up in ’09, especially since I do a shitload of travel photography. But I never posted anything there, because I was afraid it would die. And now, says here, it will. In seven days. The reason: As of August 10, 2014, Fotopedia.com will close and our iOS… Continue reading
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Urban originals
It would have been great to visit the Egyptian Spice Market in Istanbul with my old friend Stephen Lewis, whose knowledge that city runs deep and long. But I was just passing through the Old City by chance, waylaid en route from Sydney to Tel Aviv, and Stephen was still in Sofia, which he also… Continue reading
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The long run
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And… Continue reading
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Cars as crucibles for personal autonomy
From Merriam-Webster: cru·ci·ble noun\ˈkrü-sə-bəl\ : a pot in which metals or other substances are heated to a very high temperature or melted : a difficult test or challenge : a place or situation that forces people to change or make difficult decisions This is what cars will become. The difficult decision is where to draw… Continue reading
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Something beyond perfection
I last visited Barcelona more than twenty years ago. Back then the Sagrada Família was already impressive, but also incomplete. All that stood were the nativity façade and some small number (four? eight?) of the Sagrada’s eventual eighteen towers. I recall nothing of the interior, perhaps because there was none. In many ways, in fact,… Continue reading
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The Holy Mountain of Montserrat
To an window-sitter accustomed to flying over the American West, Catalonia from altitude looks like Utah. On the northern horizon the Pyrenees, like the Uintahs, run east-west above a dry landscape of settled alluvium, much of it reddish as the San Rafael desert. While the shapes of the ancient towns below are clearly old world in… Continue reading
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Remembering Peter Bardach
I took my first job in radio at WSUS in Franklin, New Jersey, in 1972. The station at the time consisted of a run-down ranch house at the top of Hamburg Mountain, overlooking the central valleys of Sussex County, a tilted square of farms and forests at the northern point of the state. The house was at… Continue reading
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Fred Wilson’s talk at LeWeb
I’m bummed that I missed LeWeb, but I’m glad I got to see and hear Fred Wilson’s talk there, given on Tuesday. I can’t recommend it more highly. Go listen. It might be the most leveraged prophesy you’re ever going to hear. I’m biased in that judgement, because the trends Fred visits are ones I’ve devoted my… Continue reading
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Hart Island: a movie we need, about zombies as heroes
As Halloween approaches (and death itself, for all of us, eventually), I find myself thinking, Do zombies always have to be bad? And, What if zombies were good? And, Hey, maybe good zombies are what we call ‘angels’. Then I find myself wondering where one would recruit armies of zombie angels (let’s call them “zangels”), besides your basic… Continue reading
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Digging Hart Island, New York’s Million-Corpse Potter’s Field
A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization. — Samuel Johnson Visitors to New York’s Orchard Beach (at the top of the photo above) probably don’t know that the low wooded island offshore will, at the current rate, contain a million buried human bodies, if it doesn’t already. The site is Hart… Continue reading