archive goatee
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Given I always like to have a project, and some inspiration from DJ Audit [°], Nora and I went to Bikes not Bombs in JP to pick up a funky bike [°]. It looks like one of those Schwinn Sting Rays: very cool but in miserable shape. There was a thick coating of hard grease and grass clippings, the steering was misaligned, the chain was hanging off, and I suspected the rear hub was damaged. However, after some cleaning and polishing, it looked pretty cool. However, it still wasn't rideable. This afternoon I took it by Broadway Bicycle School and Peter helped me out. In technical terms, he said "the rear hub is fucked" and explained the mechanisms of Bendix coaster brakes — I love Broadway! Since I planned on buying some 100 hole wheels anyways (lots of spokes) I'll replace it. Peter also pointed me to the local cruiser gang he rides with, the Sculs. How cool is that!?
Oh well, I need to order those wheels, my new white-wall tires are waiting.
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i have it on the best authority that boys *do* make passes at girrls with glasses. of course, i don't guarantee that they're always the pick of the litter. but if you're a nerdy - glasses - type like yours truly, you can't be too choosy now, can you. note the following exchange between me and a strapping caucasian WWF type. this occurred in a crowded subway car after i bumped into our hero's magazine. him: hey, you're cute! that's all i'm saying .... blah, blah, blah... you got a problem with that?! me: [blank, disbelieving look] him: DOO - YOOOU - UN-DER-STAND ? me: no, i guess i don't. him: [snort - disgusted look for not feeling appropriately flattered followed by a careful scrutiny of my meager physical attributes] you got a nice tattoo me: [still disbelieving] if you didn't want me to stand here, you could have just asked me to move! him: oh yeah? [yelling at my retreating back] well, why don't you go back to your OWN country then?! so girrls, take heart ... boys WILL notice you. the notion of eyeglasses being unattractive is outdated but just don't dare be non-White. |
In Boston an 85 cent token gets you a ride to anywhere, at anytime. When I travel to other cities, particularly outside of the States, public transport is frequently metered: so much money for two zones; so much money for three hours. While I don't like these systems, they have the benefit of being able to speak with eccentrics trying to sell unexpired tickets. In Amsterdam, a Rasta quietly asked me, "Hey man, I can sell you my ticket for half price, still good for two hours." A punk pan-handled with some weird story about trying to get back to Prague. I told both of them straight-up I was a tourist and didn't know what the hell I was doing and didn't want to pay $10 for an expired ticket. In the end I'm a sucker. I took the Rasta up on the deal, and gave the punk some money for helping me figure out the map. Even if I did get screwed with a bad ticket, the system is largely voluntary, and if challenged by a subway cop I could play the dumb tourist. Plus, it gives me a little buzz of "peoples' solidarity" and it strokes an odd sort of vanity in that they could easily recognize that ... you know ... I'm down with the used ticket scene.
I found two interesting referrers in my log files today.
Dear NYTimes.com,
A recent story on your site addressed Congressional concern regarding the merger of AOL and Time Warner; Senators were focussing on "a provision that allows consumers to choose Internet providers not affiliated with America Online Time Warner and still get high-speed, or broadband, services over cable modems." [A] The central issue before the Senate was the importance and benefit of content being independent of the means by which one obtains it.
Not surprisingly, this independence is one of the reasons the Web has been so successful. In Weaving the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, wrote of his motivation for enabling international researchers at CERN to collaborate and access each others' information, "... I realized that the diversity of different computer systems and networks could be a rich resource — something to be represented, not a problem to be eradicated." [B] Once the Web began to spread, this motivation led to the formation of the World Wide Web Consortium ( W3C). The W3C was tasked with ensuring that the Web did not fragment, that while it would be extensible and flexible, there would be one Web, not a Microsoft Web, a Netscape Web, an American Web, and/nor a European Web.
NYTimes.com recently took a step that breaks the Web. Previously, I used a Palm Pilot Web browser to fetch and read the NTimes.com cover stories at:
At the beginning of June 2000 I noticed you stopped updating that page, then the link was broken, and today it is merely an alternative copy of your main site. When I asked what happened to the site, I was told:
Please try going to http://www.nytimes.com/partners/palm-pilot/avantgo.html and click on the appropriate link. We hope we have corrected the problem.
This does not correct the problem, it worsens it. Avantgo couples Web content to its application by hiding content behind a proprietary transport mechanism called a conduit. Your site is no longer on the Web — if it is, then tell me its location. It's now part of the Avantgo Web and this is simply not necessary. The free Sitescooper application uses standard HTTP, HTML and other free tools to fetch and translate content in a way that is accessible to small Web devices. The commercial iSilo application does the same! So I encourage you to use the same Web the rest of us use. Please let me know when you do, because I enjoyed reading NYTimes on the Web with my Palm.
[A] Eric Schmitt. AOL-Time Warner Pledge Questioned by Senate
Panel. March 1, 2000, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final. Section
C; Page 2; Column 1.
[B] Tim Berners-Lee, et al. Weaving
the Web : The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by
its Inventor, p 15.
trouble wrote me an interesting thought (knowing of my views on suicide) about the ego yanking rant:
>interesting what you are saying about zinesters removing their sites and it
>being antisocial. I would say the same thing (or a similar argument) about
>suicide. but i think you take different view of suicide?
To restate the question, do I believe if you start a site you are compelled to continue it forever? No. If someone wants to move on with respect to their site or life, I respect that decision. You can always stop, but it's not nice to take things back; that's like someone coming to my home and burning any photos and letters I had of them before they left.
I'm actually concerned about what would happen to my site if I died and I wasn't around to keep it up. I think I'm going to do a will with some geeks to ensure they'll at least stick an archive up once I'm gone.
I went for my first midnight skinny dip in Jamaica Pond this weekend. Perfect: a sandy gravel bottom, pale bums, sleeping ducks, and clear moonlit water.
This morning, my friend Nora and I planned on walking to Kendall Square T stop, but the mist turned to rain and we turned to the Central Square stop. In the subway car I proceeded to wipe the rain from her eye glasses with my sleave when she commented with surprise on the new advertisement for Starbuck's Tiazzi, "Induces Vomitting!?" Of course that's not what it said. It said frolicking, but the fogged up glasses induced a brilliant misunderstanding — and potential for an interesting stickering campaign.
One of the things I dislike immensely about zinesters is their prideful fickleness. At the W3C we strongly believe that once a URL is published it should be maintained. This can mean updating the site, preserving it, marking it historical, but not removing it. Yanking something is anti-social: breaking links in the web and removing the context of your contemporaries.
A few days ago I was very annoyed to discover that an entry I linked to was dead. Paul had written a very funny and award winning entry on identifying the various people who visited his site from his log files. This is not a case of someone losing the resources used to host the site. Paul's pages now state, "I decided to halt this incarnation of Ftrain. I have lost interest in the writing. The project is constrained." What the hell? You don't feel like writing now, so you just yank everything you've done before?! Also this week I encountered a journal site that had been removed by the author because he felt that not enough people were signing his guest book and sending email. Something about a lack of community and not enough fan mail to justify his effort. I don't know... does having other people advertise their own web site in a guestbook strike you as community?
Kizz Wednesday, 5/31/00, 7:28 AM
Nice page! If you want a cd of New Breed, you can just contact us at newbreed@innoweb.com and we will send it to you.
Web Site: The Official New Breed
E-mail: newbreed@innoweb.com
[Yes, I un-hyperlinked the text to "The Official New Breed" since its cover page states, "...this page must(!) be viewed in total darkness and at 1024x784..." I can't link to that with a clean conscience!]
Now, we all like to receive attention. I'm tickled pink that a colleague emailed me to tell me something I wrote is referenced in a new book, and I'm thrilled I'm quoted in the latest Economist based on my Internet Anarchy paper. (I say this cognizant that I'm displaying some prideful ego of my own!) But that is for professional stuff. On this site, I get about one email every two weeks. Frequently folks write that they usually don't send email but prefer a guestbook. Often, the interaction ends with that, but sometimes the conversations last and I make a new friend. However, I consider my real community to be those sites that I respect and link to, and those that link to me. Breaking a link fractures that community.
Of course, I'd like more people to link to me (who doesn't like a full server log?) but all in good time I figure. I'm not going to spend my time on this site by dropping links in guest books, banners, and rings. Even if no one linked to me, I'd still persist as an exercise in quality. And if I no longer had the time or resources to continue, I'd retain it as a snapshot, from my perspective, of the people, places, and work that I care about: my community.
I once read a Miss Manners column in which a women asked how should she politely put off people who presumed her husband beat her and then encouraged her to leave him. She did not want to explain the particulars of the degenerative disease that caused her bruise like rashes, nor have to defend the man she loved, the man who was helping her face this chronic disease, to strangers. I thought, how terribly awkward. I understand the intent to help battered partners, but these misguided attempts were extremely offensive and painful.
My friend Nora bruises very easily; now that she works behind a bar she bumps against lots of corners. It concerns me a little, but she saw a doctor, took some vitamins; it's no biggie, it's her business and no one likes to feel self conscious. Unfortunately, this weekend we both faced comments that reminded me of that Miss Manners column. During the otherwise pleasant Central Square Fair I was twice asked/accused of how she got two big ass bruises on her arm. One comment was jokingly made by a male colleague I never met before; the other slightly accusatory question was from her roommate.
Nora takes offense at the presumption that people that know her would think she would submit to an abusive relationship. I found both so offensive I was at a loss of how to respond. I said nothing one time, and "they look pretty bad" the other. When Nora and I talked about it, we explored the whole range of responses from a "it doesn't hurt," to "fuck off," to (jokingly) "now she knows her place." I don't like any of them, particularly the one that would probably be most socially acceptable: the tongue-and-cheek acknowledgement of misogynistic gender roles. I think next time I'll opt for, "fuck off and ask her."
Last week I saw the urologist about a vasectomy. His first words were, "Why would someone as young as you want to do this?" He reassured me about the procedural aspects, but "played the devil's advocate" with respect to the finality of the operation mentioning that he sees many men that want it reversed. "What happens if you end up in a very good, long term relationship, and the women really wants kids. It might even be in the relationship you are in now, where neither of you want kids, but five years in the future...?" I responded that since I don't plan on having kids, why put femmes through the pill? And I've been through the kid issue before, 5 years ago, when it was a factor in the break-up of a 3.5 year relationship. Before, I was adamant about not having kids, but I've mellowed a lot since and could imagine having a kid with someone I loved; there might be some good times in that. But that acknowledgement is still a far cry from an active desire, which I never expect to have (particularly for the whole infancy phase). And if I did, I think the right thing to do would be to adopt. So he encouraged me to think very hard about it. That put me off quite a bit. He raised the big doubts about finality — I can't predict the future. And the idea of holding an ice pack to my balls after an operation isn't much of a motivator either.
While walking away from his office, it dawned on me that doctors really
recommend this for married men who've already had children. It's a form of
marital "X kids is enough" birth control. I think this because he mentioned
that having a vasectomy in one's 20s is young, particularly if one's never
had any kids. Furthermore, he argued that a woman taking the pill in her
twenties or earlier thirties is not likely to have substantive health affects
relative to an older woman.
So, I still want to do it, but I fear he took some of the steam I was trying
to build up to schedule the actual operation.
I wish people would stop calling this anarchy: funny yes, anarchy no.
LONDON, June 3 (AFP) - British police stepped in to preserve public decency Saturday as anarchist protestors in London demonstrated their views on the monarchy by "mooning" -- dropping their pants and showing their backsides.
Also, selected for the readers' pleasure: a few odd things that people typed into search engines that then brought them to my site within the past four days:
The robot erotica is pretty neat sounding, too bad I don't have any!
"The lawyers in the music industry have skewed the business to work beneficially for them and not for the artist." — Chuck D
In Amsterdam, Law Professor Lawrence Lessig gave a WWW9 keynote on Cyberspace's Architectural Constitution. He mentioned that copyright (a limited monopoly of expression and ideas) had been extended from the original 14 years to life-of-the-author+70. In my opinion, there's some problems with the this in particular and many problems with intellectual property in general. But it's sometimes difficult to voice this opinion because the small encroachments of copyright and patent that led to the present system are largely unseen. It's a creeping heaviness, but to complain of the invisible weight is thought to be unreasonable. Surely authors should be compensated and their work respected? If the intent of the law is to prevent unauthorized duplication, then why not build authorization systems into the fabric of new technology? And if those technologies can be circumvented (for good or bad), why not forbid that as well?
Two centuries after the Constitution a new capital 'C' is in charge. Corporatists are in control and extending their greedy hands into the infrastructure of the future. This is not about incenting and protecting authors, this is about companies making money off label controlled pop blitzes. (Read Courtney Love's excellent rant if you want to understand how.) If this was about authors, the idea of moral rights (rights of integrity, attribution, and response) would not be laughed at in the US. If this was about authors, record label lobbeyists would not have snuck in an amendment to unrelated legislation that all sound productions are automatically "works for hire" and consequently not even the property of its author.
After Lessig's talk, William Loughborough used the open mic to suggest direct action, like that of activists who chained their wheelchairs to inaccessible doors and buses. As a self-styled anarchistic that has a great deal of respect for civil disobedience, I like this idea. (And 'Love' seems like an interesting character, including some thoughtful writing and credits as the voice of a robot officer in THX 1138 — the IMDB amusingly shows him as credited in Deep Throat as Wilbur Wang as well though he denies it!)
Later, at the terminal table I asked Love how would one protest the direction of copyright and patents with respect to technology? How do I chain myself to the door of cyberspace? Someone else responded he uses Napster and Gnutella to download mp3s. These area the controversial tools used to exchange files — 90% of which are probably 'illegal.' Maybe that would "help bring the system down."
As I write this I'm listening to a DarkAngel mp3 that I discovered by accident. I can rationalize that I could not have purchased this song given I never heard of it! And that it might prompt me to even go buy some albums. I can speak of DIY ethics and punk cred; I produce my creative content for free and that if I come by way of something for free but still want to encourage the creator, I trade, barter or even send money.
However, ripping off mp3s as a form of righteousness strikes me as rather self serving. We're not talking about civil disobedience, we're talking about getting something for free. The righteous thing would mean making a sacrifice that benefits others, not benefiting at others' expense. The point of anarchy and civil disobedience is not to further chaos, theft, and destruction, but to shed the harsh strictures of external authorities and opt for ethical self integrity; in the absence of law, one must substitute heavier burdens, things like etiquette and ethics. To quote Miss Manners (one of my favorite anarchist social theorists), "But for all its strictness, etiquette is much more flexible and less threatening than law, and therefore more suitable for gently regulating ordinary life." This means paying no mind to some laws, but it also requires a stricter form of self discipline on many issues. Gandhi wrote, "Civil disobedience presupposes willing obedience of our self-imposed rules, and without it civil disobedience would be cruel joke."
So what's a ethical anarchist to do? I don't know. But we can challenge the bullshit on both sides of the fence. The music industry doesn't care about furthering creativity and access, it's about making money. If the whole music industry collapsed today, I don't think the world would be any less for it. In fact, I think it would be better. And while (in principle) the Napster server doesn't exchange copyrighted files, let's not pretend that the system isn't predominantly used to facilitate it.
I'm going to keep on downloading mp3s because it's so very convenient, but I'm not going to call it protest.
[update: read about how I paid for the DarkAngel mp3.]
Copyright © (2000) NrrrdBoy. All Rights Reserved. http://goatee.net/
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