This is a chart of the two main binary oppositions within the logic of copyright law:
From her bio: Johanna Blakley is the deputy director of the Norman Lear Center, a research and public policy institute that explores the convergence of entertainment, commerce and society.
The chart appears at 13:25 into her TED talk. To really see it, you should watch the HD version, available only as a podcast.
I love it when people get visually articulate.
The following is a letter I just sent to my senators via the HRC.
I believe that our military must reflect the society we are and aspire to be. I believe that it must affirm, not deny, the dignity of all Americans loyal and courageous enough to serve in our armed forces. Under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, being openly homosexual — which is no crime — is to be unfit for military duty.
Our history is replete with examples of these concessions to fear and hatred, and every time we overcame them, we became a stronger and better nation for doing so. Today it is no different. Supporters of DADT foment fear over military readiness, hoping to scare us with the prospect of a military so undisciplined that to acknowledge the existence and equality of the thousands of gays currently serving in the military would leave it unable to execute its duties. That is an insult to the military and citizens alike.
We must take action to overcome these forces now, for our own dignity is on the line as well. If we do not, history will record that we chose comfort over challenge, and cowardice over righteousness.
Please, for the honor of all Americans, you must repeal this shameful law.
I’ve figured out what has been so depressing about this (beyond the obvious). It’s the future. A friend of mine has been fond of saying lately that today is starting to look more and more like the Jetsons. The future of our childhood is here today: jetpacks, flying cars, robots that walk, wearable computers and retina screens.
There are other, possibly worse, tragedies that have far worse immediate human life tolls, like Darfur and Haiti, but at least you can say that those woes belong to the past. Ideas of the past, and cities of the past. Not past enough, but that’s where they belong.
But this spill is of the future. As is climate change… but although that’s been a thing for a while, even a believer like me can’t claim that I’ve felt the impact of it yet. But the spill… in about 3 months we’ll begin to understand the scope of it. This is also the future; us spoiling our home planet on a scope previously unachievable.
Star Trek or Mad Max? I don’t like what this points to.
Terminus Est needs your input. Please submit in the comments your favorite org(s) that are fighting to guarantee marriage rights to all citizens, regardless of sexual orientation, and why you like them. The Wikipedia article on Gay rights organizations lists like 114 orgs in the US alone.
I already donate to Immigration Equality, which puts effort into reforming immigration law so that people can sponsor their LGBT and HIV positive partners for green cards, which, even if you live in a sate with legal gay marriage, currently you cannot do. Now I’m looking for orgs which are working for marriage equality.
Whatever you say, buddy.
There was an a lot of response to my mention of a cabinet in my office that protested suspiciously that it contained no fuses.
There was pretty much universal demand that I open the cabinet, to find out if there were fuses, no fuses, or spring snakes in there.
Only Adam, however, took up the challenge of explaining the presence of the mystifying label, in light of my claim that labels are only applied in cases where the information on them is not self-evident, and that there is a cost associated with not knowing that information. Check on the info not being self-evident, no check on there being a cost to not knowing the information. Adam tried to explain that there was, maybe, a cost:
Frequently, the precise switch or fuse, is unlabeled and elusive. Example: My parents’ apartment has many intricacies (electrically speaking), poor labeling, and a poetic absence of order or common sense. If I were looking for the right fuse, and couldn’t find it, and saw a box like the one here in the pic, I would appreciate knowing that that NO FUSES were inside before I went ahead and opened it. Granted, opening the box usually isn’t such a big deal. Unless it is closed with screws, locked, or if there is just a bunch of crap conveniently positioned in front of it which would need to be moved before opening it (like at Mom and Dad’s).
–Adam
Not a terrible theory, but what I hadn’t shown before was the context around that cabinet. Here, then, is the whole picture:
Wait, what about those other ones?
As you can see, the cabinet with allegedly no fuses in it (middle, top) is surrounded by 3 other cabinets, none of which have NO FUSES signs on them. For Adam’s theory to be correct, either that cabinet has to look more like it has fuses in it than the others, or all the other cabinets do have fuses in them, or they ran out of “NO FUSES” signs after just one.
No, let me stop you there. Don’t weigh the options. Instead, I will reveal what is inside that cabinet, and what is more, I will reveal what is in the cabinets alongside it!
Aptly labeled. But why?
Ooooh... that makes -- no, actually that makes no sense at all.
The cabinet in question? Well, it’s true, there are no fuses in it! And the semanticist in me even appreciates that there may be a distinction being made, although it unquestionably contains strips of metal that bridge circuits — those heavy, thick copper plates are more like permanent switches than fuses, because they are clearly not designed for the purpose of breaking a circuit by burning away when they are overloaded. They are probably the electric company’s demarc.
Do, however, take note of what is in the cabinet directly below this cabinet with no fuses in it. Go ahead and click through to the full-size image if you can’t tell… no wait I’ll just tell you IT’S FUSES.
I submit to you that really that wall should look like this:
Emphasize the positive!
Three nights ago, I had overshot my subway station on my way home because I stayed on the express one extra stop. So it was that I came to wait on the Nostrand St. C train platform Manhattan-bound. While I waited, a man sat down next to me on the bench, listening to music so loudly in his Dr. Dre beats that I could hear it all quite well even though those are big cover-your-ears cans.
He looked to be a con-ed employee recently off-shift, because he had a blue hard hat dangling from his rucksack. The music was a typical modern blend: a rapper rapping a verse and an R&B singer singing a chorus. The R&B was uninteresting but the rapper had a style I thought I recognized… but couldn’t quite put a finger on it.
The train came and we both took our seats on it, and because this guy sat next to me I tapped him and asked, when he removed his phones, “what are you listening to?”
He looked at me and said matter-of-factly, “Rap. Rap music.”
Sigh.
