DancingSamurai.ca

So I haven’t been blogging much. Even when I ‘blog’ it tends to be links to other cool stuff on the internet… but y’know, I’m busy with work… my wife… my son… etc. So… c’est la vie!!

Had a very laid back birthday. Some yummy dinner, and cheesecake. Mmm….

Otherwise, what caught my eye? Well:

• Liquid Glass. Comes as a spray-on can. Apparently, it’s very very awesome.
• Very, very interesting documentary: “digital nation” on PBS. See it online here. (via BoingBoing) (Anyone have a downloadable link?)
• Kids’ Lingerie? Boy, Disney’s expanding their market to child porn, I guess…

And finally, an interesting article on how computing is moving away from being open-ended and tinkerable. This hit home – I have fond memories of playing around with BASIC on our old PC XT computer, and making all kinds of programs. If you can’t do this sort of thing on newer computers, a lot of the mystery & allure that gets kids to really explore and learn computers will be gone – and we’ll be breeding a generation of nothing but lusers.

When DVD Jon was arrested after breaking the CSS encryption algorithm, he was charged with “unauthorized computer trespassing.” That led his lawyers to ask the obvious question, “On whose computer did he trespass?” The prosecutor’s answer: “his own.”

[...]

Once upon a time, Apple made the machines that made me who I am. I became who I am by tinkering. Now it seems they’re doing everything in their power to stop my kids from finding that sense of wonder. Apple has declared war on the tinkerers of the world. With every software update, the previous generation of “jailbreaks” stop working, and people have to find new ways to break into their own computers.

Via BoingBoing, I saw this video interview with a pretty interesting young artist, Danni Shinya Luo. I don’t think my wife would approve of having her art around, but it is quite remarkable!

So here’s a bit of an interesting rant by Clay Shirky on gender differences in assertiveness:

And it looks to me like women in general, and the women whose educations I am responsible for in particular, are often lousy at those kinds of behaviors, even when the situation calls for it. They aren’t just bad at behaving like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks. They are bad at behaving like self-promoting narcissists, anti-social obsessives, or pompous blowhards, even a little bit, even temporarily, even when it would be in their best interests to do so. Whatever bad things you can say about those behaviors, you can’t say they are underrepresented among people who have changed the world.

Now this is asking women to behave more like men, but so what? We ask people to cross gender lines all the time. We’re in the middle of a generations-long project to encourage men to be better listeners and more sensitive partners, to take more account of others’ feelings and to let out our own feelings more. Similarly, I see colleges spending time and effort teaching women strategies for self-defense, including direct physical aggression. I sometimes wonder what would happen, though, if my college spent as much effort teaching women self-advancement as self-defense.

The comments are very interesting (at least the first few I have read – I’ll have to go back when I am not so pressed for time). danah boyd posts some on her own blog:

Growing up, I loved to debate. With anyone. My debating tone used to drive my mother batty because she thought I was yelling at her. Exasperated, I would often bark back that I was simply debating. Over the years, I realized that my debating tone is one of such confidence that people believe me to be stating facts, not opinions. My mother interpreted it as yelling; my classmates interpreted it as arrogance. I also began to realize that it was the same tone as that of my male peers. I never apologized for my opinions, never deflated them with “I may be wrong but I think…” I asserted. Confidently. And loudly.

Why am I telling you this? Clay Shirky’s “A Rant About Women” has provoked all sorts of conversations in the blogosphere and on Twitter. And Tom Coates rightfully pointed out that one interpretation of Shirky is the problematic encouragement of self-promotion and lies. While a lot has been said on this topic, I feel the need to speak up and say more. Because, as I said, I’m loud.

Heh, a nice, clear-language essay about the problem with copyright (this is part of Tucows’ submission for the copyright consultation):

Even within any one class of incentive, the effect of money on creativity is rarely a straight line. Mordechai Richler would not have written four times as many books if his advances had been four times larger. The Guess Who might be tempted to release more recycled compilations if you pay them enough money, but their songs would not have gotten 1% better for every 1% their revenues went up. Thus, while copyright may provide a financial incentive that enables many creators to create, stronger copyright that results in more money does not necessarily result in more creativity.

In fact, how long would it take you to list the bands that have gotten worse as they’ve gotten richer?

[...]

Now, there would be no problem with setting up a system of laws that overemphasizes the financial incentives for creators if that system had no other effects. But it does, especially now that culture and economics have slipped the bonds of the old physics. Even if we devised a copyright law that provided the absolutely right amount of incentive for every creator to keep on creating, it takes more than motivated creators to build a creative, innovative culture.

It takes culture. It takes culture to build culture.

Whether it’s Walt Disney recycling the Brothers Grimm, Stephen King doing variations on a theme of Bram Stoker, or James Joyce mashing Homer up with, well, everything, there’s no innovation that isn’t a reworking of what’s already there. An innovative work without cultural roots would be literally unintelligible. So, incentives that require overly-strict restrictions on our use of cultural works directly diminish the innovativeness of that culture.

(via BoingBoing)

I recently drafted and sent in a letter to the Canadian Copyright Consultation (and cc’d it to my MP). I drew heavily on Michael Geist’s Speak Out on Copyright website and his Short Answer. (Because I agree with him, not because I am lazy or intellectually bankrupt. *wink*)

Please send your own comments in – you have another 4 weeks or so!

(more…)

The Pirate Party comes to Canada… even if unlikely to win any seats, it’s an indication that copyright laws do matter to more and more canadians. (via BoingBoing)

And Swedish Pirate Party spokesperson has an op-ed in the financial times highlighting the problem:

If you search for Elvis Presley in Wikipedia, you will find a lot of text and a few pictures that have been cleared for distribution. But you will find no music and no film clips, due to copyright restrictions. What we think of as our common cultural heritage is not “ours” at all.

On MySpace and YouTube, creative people post audio and video remixes for others to enjoy, until they are replaced by take-down notices handed out by big film and record companies. Technology opens up possibilities; copyright law shuts them down.

This was never the intent. Copyright was meant to encourage culture, not restrict it. This is reason enough for reform. But the current regime has even more damaging effects. In order to uphold copyright laws, governments are beginning to restrict our right to communicate with each other in private, without being monitored.

[...]

Whenever there are ways of communicating in private, they will be used to share copyrighted material. If you want to stop people doing this, you must remove the right to communicate in private. There is no other option. Society has to make a choice.

Well, I’m on call, so I’m just chillin’ and catching up on some charting… and reading… some interesting tidbits:

• The Oakville Waterfront Festival is this weekend. May be tough to go with my newborn little son… so maybe next year.
• A little story illustrating the point that functional disorders are diagnoses of exclusion.
• A urine test for appendicitis? Would be useful! (via WhiteCoat)
• Steve Novella reviews the history of chiropractic – wow, it’s really just woo, isn’t it?
  

  In the past 100 years, there has been very little research conducted into the basic principles of straight chiropractic. There is no research that indicates the existence of innate intelligence or that such a force plays any role in health and disease. Further, the evidence strongly suggests that chiropractic subluxations are a figment of the chiropractic imagination. And it also seems that spinal manipulation is not capable of realigning the vertebra of the spine.

• And a legal analysis of the recent HIV non-disclosure criminal cases & the public health implications. Waiting for the next article… I don’t necessarily agree with the author but it’s interesting reading.
• And this just disgusts me: Supreme Court declares strip search of 13-year old unconstitutional. You need a Supreme Court to tell you strip searching a 13-year old girl based on a classmate’s accusation that she has IBUPROFEN, without calling her parents, or police, is a bad idea? I’m shocked, but not surprised… sadly…

Interesting post by danah boyd on why it’s OK, even a good thing, for students & teachers to interact outside the classroom:

The fear about teacher-student interactions also worries me at a broader societal level. A caring teacher (a genuinely well-intended, thoughtful, concerned adult) can often turn a lost teen into a teen with a mission. Many of us are lucky to have parents who helped us at every turn, but this is by no means universal. There are countless youth out there whose parents are absent, distrustful, or otherwise sources of frustration rather than support and encouragement. Teens need to have adults on their side. When I interview teens who have tough family lives (and I’m not talking about abuse here) but are doing OK themselves, I often find that it’s a teacher or pastor that they turn to for advice. All too often, the truly troubled kids that I meet have no adults that they can turn to for support.