December 30, 2012
Retreat.

As a new experiment, I am taking January off from all social media. No Twitter, no Facebook, no G+.

And this, too, although given the paucity of posts, that would not actually be noticeable as a “break.”

Those familiar with my situation will know that the past few weeks have been a pretty intense time. I did great damage to a loved one, and the consequences have substantial.

In February — or sometime thereafter — I may take Bluejack.com in a new direction & may or may not maintain a presence on tumblr. Will post with the outcome of the experiment, though.

See you in February.

5:39pm  |   URL: http://bluejack.com/post/39264385295/retreat
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August 5, 2012
My first cello-related injury.  I was returning a loaner cello that I’ve had for over a year. For the first time ever, the end pin caught me, just as I was putting it in the car. (The case it came in has a hole in the bottom for the endpin to stick out.) I have to conclude it was trying to give me something extra to remember it by.

My first cello-related injury. 

I was returning a loaner cello that I’ve had for over a year. For the first time ever, the end pin caught me, just as I was putting it in the car. (The case it came in has a hole in the bottom for the endpin to stick out.)

I have to conclude it was trying to give me something extra to remember it by.

5:03pm  |   URL: http://bluejack.com/post/28798436335/my-first-cello-related-injury-i-was-returning-a
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(Notes: 1)
  
June 7, 2012
HBO Online

Brilliant idea: Take My Money HBO — and very popular. But the nay sayers are coming out of the woodwork. There are a number of finance and infrastructure counterarguments, from HBO’s perspective. Ryan Lawler, on techcrunch, argues that the numbers no longer add up when you take the marketing and distribution into account, services currently off the books in the cable arrangement. Put those costs onto HBOs books, and the economics of online distribution no longer work out.

This based on a faulty assumption, namely: “Going direct to online customers by pitching HBO GO over-the-top would mean losing the support of its cable, satellite, and IPTV distributors.”

Lawler states this, but offers no support. There are any number of mechanisms for preventing this loss of support, or transitioning it. (Best I’ve seen so far: start at a high price point to limit cannibalization, and pump some of the proceeds back to the cable system. Another: pull a hulu and limit access to current shows, require the full cable subscription to get access to back inventory.)

Moreover, Lawler completely ignores the potential upside for HBO of slipping out of the cable noose. Cable limits the potential viewership both regionally and economically. Imagine an immediate global audience for an established product that has heretofore been restricted to a very small demographic slice. There are few companies that would walk away from that without giving it serious consideration.

So, let’s be honest: what’s really going on here is that HBO is owned by the cable company itself. Time Warner is calling the shots and acting not in HBO’s best interests or the viewer’s best interests. They are acting in the cable company’s best interests.

Most people think of cable companies as a necessary evil. With the advent of cloud based media (Netflix, Amazon, etc.), Cable companies are losing their grip on “necessary”.

My advice to Time Warner would be: you’re already losing your monopoly, so why not reposition and rebrand in a way that convincingly rejects the evil?

In conclusion, the biggest argument Lawler misses is the simple good will that HBO currently has by virtue of producing consistently excellent programming. Rather than abuse that good will to bolster a dying business model, why not leverage it to invent a new one?


11:36am  |   URL: http://bluejack.com/post/24621825620/hbo-online
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May 18, 2012
wtwdeclaration: It’s Gender Equality for Dummies! Equal rights! Equal Pay! Everything your great grandmother fought for! www.wtwdeclaration.org

wtwdeclaration:

It’s Gender Equality for Dummies! Equal rights! Equal Pay! Everything your great grandmother fought for!

www.wtwdeclaration.org

11:21am  |   URL: http://bluejack.com/post/23299503257/wtwdeclaration-its-gender-equality-for
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(Notes: 5)
  
May 15, 2012
anticapitalist: Our real first gay president The new issue of Newsweek features a cover photo of President Obama topped by a rainbow-colored halo and captioned “The First Gay President.” The halo and caption strike me as cheap sensationalism. I realize airport travelers look at a magazine for 2.2 seconds before moving on to the next one. I grant that this cover will probably get Newsweek a 4.4 second glance. I also understand that Newsweek is desperate for sales. Nevertheless, I doubt that the Newsweek of old, before it was sold for a dollar, would have pandered as shallowly. The caption is a superficial way to characterize an important development of thought that the president — along with the country — has been making over recent years. It is also entirely wrong. Like the mini-furor a couple of months back about the claim that Richard Nixon was our first gay president, the story simply ignores that the U.S. already had a gay president more than a century ago. There can be no doubt that James Buchanan was gay, before, during and after his four years in the White House. Moreover, the nation knew it, too — he was not far into the closet. Today, I know no historian who has studied the matter and thinks Buchanan was heterosexual. Fifteen years ago, historian John Howard, author of “Men Like That,” a pioneering study of queer culture in Mississippi, shared with me the key documents, including Buchanan’s May 13, 1844, letter to a Mrs. Roosevelt. Describing his deteriorating social life after his great love, William Rufus King, senator from Alabama, had moved to Paris to become our ambassador to France, Buchanan wrote: I am now “solitary and alone,” having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection. Tl;dr Newsweek go fuck yourself. We’ve had a gay president before. Stop being a sensationalist piece of shit.

anticapitalist:

Our real first gay president

The new issue of Newsweek features a cover photo of President Obama topped by a rainbow-colored halo and captioned “The First Gay President.” The halo and caption strike me as cheap sensationalism. I realize airport travelers look at a magazine for 2.2 seconds before moving on to the next one. I grant that this cover will probably get Newsweek a 4.4 second glance. I also understand that Newsweek is desperate for sales. Nevertheless, I doubt that the Newsweek of old, before it was sold for a dollar, would have pandered as shallowly.

The caption is a superficial way to characterize an important development of thought that the president — along with the country — has been making over recent years. It is also entirely wrong. Like the mini-furor a couple of months back about the claim that Richard Nixon was our first gay president, the story simply ignores that the U.S. already had a gay president more than a century ago.

There can be no doubt that James Buchanan was gay, before, during and after his four years in the White House. Moreover, the nation knew it, too — he was not far into the closet.

Today, I know no historian who has studied the matter and thinks Buchanan was heterosexual. Fifteen years ago, historian John Howard, author of “Men Like That,” a pioneering study of queer culture in Mississippi, shared with me the key documents, including Buchanan’s May 13, 1844, letter to a Mrs. Roosevelt. Describing his deteriorating social life after his great love, William Rufus King, senator from Alabama, had moved to Paris to become our ambassador to France, Buchanan wrote:

I am now “solitary and alone,” having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.

Tl;dr Newsweek go fuck yourself. We’ve had a gay president before. Stop being a sensationalist piece of shit.

10:50am  |   URL: http://bluejack.com/post/23111270787/anticapitalist-our-real-first-gay-president-the
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(Notes: 6,240)
  
May 15, 2012
modida: Via We, the Women.

modida:

Via We, the Women.

7:31am  |   URL: http://bluejack.com/post/23103954725/modida-via-we-the-women
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(Notes: 2)
  
May 11, 2012
Richard Stallman in the Doctor’s Office

A few points of reference:

  • For some years, Richard Stallman was something of a hero to my young techie self.
  • After a while, however, Richard Stallman seemed at best cuckoo and at worst not very good at what he thinks he’s good at anymore.
  • Then I learned that Richard Stallman may well be a pedophile. If nothing else, he is on record questioning whether “voluntary pedophilia” should be illegal. (As well as offering guidelines for best practices in incest (use a condom) and necrophilia (get permission from next-of-kin), among others.)

So, my esteem of him has been in pretty much steady decline since the early 90s.

However, his legacy to the world may well be his transformation of contract law to support intellectual property protection for open source software. Thus, this account of Richard Stallman actually asking to see the privacy notice in a doctor’s office is pretty funny. It always bugs me when I am asked to sign that I accept a privacy policy or other form of license without actually being provided with the appropriate document. To learn that said document may not even exist and/or be available is almost laughably unsurprising.

I don’t want to do it, but I love the idea that there is someone going through life calling bullshit on these guys. I may not love much else about Stallman any more, but for a minute, he’s my hero again.

7:53am  |   URL: http://bluejack.com/post/22842010864/richard-stallman-in-the-doctors-office
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May 4, 2012
Common Sense and Theoretical Physics

There are a lot of smart crackpots out there who regularly publish refutations of relativity and quantum mechanics. There are good reasons to do so: both theories are highly counter-intuitive. There are good reasons not to do so: both theories have consistently held up under experimental scrutiny. There’s a big problem: these two theories contradict each other.

Nonetheless, they are the cornerstones of contemporary physics, upon which far more grandiose (and far less stable) theories have been built.

So, it’s absolutely delightful to see one of the grandfathers of contemporary physics apply the common sense “sniff test” to the whole grand edifice: Behold, Roger Penrose.

Pretty much every word he utters in this interview is something I think on a regular basis, when I think about theoretical physics. That doesn’t mean I’m worthy to fetch the man his evening scotch-on-the-rocks, but it is very gratifying to learn that it’s going on.

1:13pm  |   URL: http://bluejack.com/post/22397060238/common-sense-and-theoretical-physics
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Filed under: science physics theory 
May 3, 2012
Your brain literally gets bored and starts scaring you

mcjulie:

When I tried the image they have set up to demonstrate the Troxler effect, where the outer circle is supposed to disappear? I was literally trying to make it happen and I couldn’t seem to. I would get a hint of the fading out and then I would feel compelled to blink or shake my head or something and would go right back to seeing the outer circle.

Is this why I can never see those “Magic Eye” pictures? Does my brain panic when stuff starts to disappear? I don’t know!

I simply couldn’t repro.  I stared at that red dot for like two minutes. Felt dizzy, the blue circle blurred from time to time, sometimes there was a little wave in which one eye or the other seemed to lose part of it, but it never disappeared. 

I really want to do that staring at my face in the mirror experiment however. I am pretty sure that the monster that appears is interesting information about what the brain thinks of its own identity. I’m hoping my mishap with the dot and the circle is not indicative of an inability to view myself as a monster!

3:44pm  |   URL: http://bluejack.com/post/22345212048/your-brain-literally-gets-bored-and-starts-scaring-you
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(Notes: 1)
  
May 3, 2012
College Sucks

My friend McJulie posted a link about education. It’s an interesting article, and McJulie’s response is spot on. I started to repost it, but realized I have more to say on the subject.

Much more.

The main point is simple: University as vocational training is a new concept, and I suspect it is one that is about to make an exit. It’s simply not the right tool for the job.

Read More

9:12am  |   URL: http://bluejack.com/post/22324166558/college-sucks
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(Notes: 1)
  
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