26 June 2000
...when I did finally leave, it wasn't about a matter of principle. Those of us who go over the wall -- who leave the Catholic Church or the Communist Party or the New York Times -- usually decide at last to jump because of something small. You have swallowed a whole history of whoppers, but there is a fatigue about your faith. Without any warning, the elastic snaps, and you are hurled out of the closed system into empty space, and your renunciation, arrived at by so many increments, looks almost capricious.
-- John Leonard, from How a Caged Bird Learns to Sing (via Girlhacker)
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Peter Gabriel's new album ovo: The Millenium Show doesn't seem to be easily available in the United States yet... CDNow and Amazon show it only as an Import with a $30 price tag. Um, no thanks, I'll wait.
In the meantime, there is a sample track downloadable from the web site's Audio section (if JavaScript is on and your QuickTime plug-in is turned on and working properly).
Curious folk who don't like having JavaScript and/or plug-ins on (like me) can instead just open their copy of QuickTime 4, choose File: Open URL... and paste or type the following:
http://www.petergabriel.com/media/qt3/rwpg01/rwpg01.mov
It's about 1.3 MB, and is apparently "The Time of the Turning", which is track 2 or 3 depending on which release you buy. The vocals are by Richie Havens, not Gabriel, so don't be confused.
(Hmmm...will I get in trouble for 'deep-linking'?)
John Leonard is the TV critic for CBS' Sunday Morning. I've always found his reviews (some recent ones are listed on CBS' site) to be very interesting and sometimes even edifying.
There was actually a time years back when I made sure I turned on the TV every Sunday just in time to hear his reviews. He has a very distinctive voice and style of speaking that I've come to enjoy immensely. That I no longer watch Sunday Morning says more about my lack of discipline than it does about any variance in his work's quality.
When I started reading the article, I didn't match the name with the man at first, and had a little trouble following all the twists and turns of his train of thought. When the light dawned, though, I suddenly heard his voice saying the words, and I read the article with his rhythms, and suddenly what was murky became clear with his voice, his face and his gravitas behind it.
Heck of a guy. Interesting read.
Somewhat-interesting reading for folks who think about interfaces:
- AskTog's Reader Mail for July
[on the new, extra-pretty, extra-detailed icons in Mac OS X]: You do not understand, Grasshopper. The purpose of the icons, the purpose of the entire OS X look and feel, is to keep the customer happy during that critical period between the time of sale and the time the check clears.
Seriously, though, Steve has never had respect for interaction designers and has always held graphic and industrial designers in the highest respect. When the Mac came along, the Mac team, grudgingly, accepted the design effort of the Lisa team, which was dominated by interaction designers. Today, no one is providing balance, and features that are demonstrably deleterious to the interface are being fervently embraced just because they look pretty.
'News' photo I never expected to see: Mike Tyson in a kilt [Yahoo, will probably expire in a few days]. Gyechh.
Fun MacHack report from the beloved Andy Ihnatko. Lots of little stories about various clever folks:
- Ihnatko Among the Hackers: Day 2 [Macworld, multipage, seen on Backup Brain]
...if you want a hugely small and colossally light PowerBook, your sole avenue is the long-discontinued 2400; that's why they're still selling for four-figures on eBay. Grr. When will Apple see that the continuing passion and popularity for the 2400 can only reflect an untapped market?!?
But I'm in no position to leap to the table and stir the proletariat into revolution, as it's 3:00 in the afternoon and time to go to bed.
Oh, I would love a small Apple notebook. I love my big Apple notebook, but it would be so much nicer most of the time to have a small (2400-sized!) Apple notebook. When, oh Mr. Jobs, when?
In every institution of our society, but especially in the media, there have always been brilliant young men (and men almost all of them have always been) who find surrogate fathers as [Edward R.] Murrow found [William] Paley. For a while in this relationship of privilege, patronage and protection, these young men imagine they can go on being brilliant, on their own terms, forever, immune to the bottom-line logic of a corporate culture that, for its own reasons, has surrounded and preserved them in aspic.
But we are not fathers and sons at all; we are landlords and tenants; owners and pets. It shouldn't surprise the brilliant young men, and yet it always surprises the brilliant young men, when the party's over and the pets are put to sleep.
-- also John Leonard, from the same article.
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