The (Most) Nabobist

What do we learn? What lessons do groups of people, for instance countries, learn? Of these lessons what pragmatic solutions are applied when similar situations present themselves? What are the impediments to these lessons learned? At what point does circumspect displace ideology?

Some great thoughts here on startups over at Joyent’s blog, Joyeur.; Web2.0 startups if I may risk offending.

Video Podcast Episode 8 of Four Eyed Monsters is up [Youtube]. Drama, hipster drama. And I say that with complete affection. I love these guys. I even bought the shirt. Check out the hipster touch.

Four Eyed Monsters tshirt packaging.

Check out their website related to the eagerly anticipated feature film and production vlog if you haven’t been following along, [foureyedmonsters.com].

This season’s annual New York City P.D.Q. Bach concert will be slightly different from what New Yorkers may have come to expect. For one thing, the concert will be a few days later than usual, putting it squarely on January 2, 2007, instead of the more traditional week between Christmas and New Year’s. For another thing, Prof. Schickele has somehow managed to coax the city’s own house band, the renowned New York Philharmonic, into playing some of the Minimeister of Wein-am-Rhein’s most impressive orchestral works. But other things remain the same: the concert will return to Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall after two years farther uptown, and the quality of the music hasn’t improved one bit. Prof. Schickele describes the program as a “lollapalooza”, and it contains impressive near-misses such as the 1712 Overture for really big orchestra (the NY Phil certainly qualifies here) and the Pervertimento for bagpipes, bicycle, and balloons, featuring the same bagpiper (Maurice Eisenstadt) and bicycle soloist (Prof. Schickele) who played the work 40 years ago at Philharmonic Hall (as it was then called).

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A simple question is asked, [Youtube link]. No, let’s make that an optimistic question is asked. This is Youtube after all. Not exactly a place one expects to find something outside of the 14-35 demographic. The hurdles required to make let alone upload a video are esoteric at best. But sometimes we can be pleasantly surprised about our world. I hope that the following response to the question will suprise you, [Youtube link]. What comes next is a true human connection made with this silly “it’s just a series of tubes” internets, [Youtube link].

It’s a relief to turn to BBC Radio 4 at Sunday 16:30 GMT and always find thirty minutes of poetry. We look forward to Roger McGough of Poetry Please’s return, in the Autumn I believe. Until then it’s a series on poetry societies. This week in Ampleforth the pound will buy your glass of wine and the poem to read aloud.

31. Spring and Fall

to a young child

MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Why is Wikipedia, as a concept, so contentious? People get so bellicose at the mere mention. When it comes to people like Jaron Lanier you’d almost think Wikipedia was– people getting together for the ritual abuse of underage children. Not to be a Wikipedia fanboy but his arguments seem so sophomoric. I won’t list them all here. If you haven’t listened, RU interviews him on the subject here at the MondoGlobo Network.

Anyway, it’s just curious to me. I listened to the following yesterday.

http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2006/08/20060802bmain.asp

Is this our society’s first confrontation with artificial intelligence? Or scirmish perhaps? Or maybe that should say artificial cognition? We tend to think of our eventual robot overlords as individuals. I wonder what their collective view of the Mel Gibson dustup would be? Would that view be at odds with our human, collective view? Would their view look a lot like the entry right now on Wikipedia?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Gibson

I digress. Jaron, do you deny the pre-Wikipedian existence of collective thought?

The artist formerly known as Renetto muses on the larger implications of Youtube and the like, link.