Monday, March 15, 2010

8:30 AM

Schneier on Security: Mark Twain on Risk Analysis:

"I hunted up statistics, and was amazed to find that after all the glaring newspaper headings concerning railroad disasters, less than three hundred people had really lost their lives by those disasters in the preceding twelve months. The Erie road was set down as the most murderous in the list. It had killed forty-six—or twenty-six, I do not exactly remember which, but I know the number was double that of any other road. But the fact straightway suggested itself that the Erie was an immensely long road, and did more business than any other line in the country; so the double number of killed ceased to be matter for surprise.

By further figuring, it appeared that between New York and Rochester the Erie ran eight passenger trains each way every day—sixteen altogether; and carried a daily average of 6,000 persons. That is about a million in six months—the population of New York city. Well, the Erie kills from thirteen to twenty-three persons out of its million in six months; and in the same time 13,000 of New York's million die in their beds! My flesh crept, my hair stood on end. "This is appalling!" I said. "The danger isn't in travelling by rail, but in trusting to those deadly beds. I will never sleep in a bed again."

8:30 AM

1:17 AM

Saturday, March 13, 2010

5:48 PM

Friday, March 12, 2010

1:21 PM

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Flavorwire » Mike Daisey Reveals Secrets of the World Order:

Mike Daisey is known for his Spalding Gray-style tour de force monologues that recall personal experiences in a social and historical context, tackling such wide-ranging topics as the financial meltdown, the corporatization of the American theatre, and his time working in customer service at Amazon.com. For three new live productions, Daisey trades his solitary table and glass of water for a talented cast of actors to craft a radio program in the mold of Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds— except, this is billed as the go-to program for “Masons of the 3rd Order and higher.”

We met up with Daisey and his alter ego to talk about the shifty masons, former presidents, powerful business men, and even an Ayn Rand musical about libertarianism and female submission. Learn about the secret order and drink the Kool-Aid after the jump.

3:05 PM

2:51 PM

Nimble Design - /the/path/of/most/resistance:

In Japanese aesthetics, one of the most striking things is the focus on negative space. The Japanese concepts of “Ma” and “Wabi-sabi” put as much focus on what is omitted as what is added. The result is beautiful art and architecture that invoke a sense of peace and stillness.

Apple is doing something rather daring with their new iPhone OS. They are essentially omitting features that people once took for granted in a typical computer. And one of the biggest things they’ve omitted is the visual file system. Instead, in the iPhone OS, the concept of the file is essentially gone. It’s been replaced by “apps and their stuff.”

The end result is that regular folks are happier with their computers and that geeks are pissed that Apple has “dumbed down” the computer. Geeks bemoan the lack of the file system in the iPad. When they criticize it for not being a real computer, this is what they’re talking about. Well, so be it.

12:43 PM

12:43 PM

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal « What I Couldn't Say…:

I feel for Google – Steve Jobs threatened to sue me, too.

In 2003, after I unveiled a prototype Linux desktop called Project Looking Glass*, Steve called my office to let me know the graphical effects were “stepping all over Apple’s IP.” (IP = Intellectual Property = patents, trademarks and copyrights.) If we moved forward to commercialize it, “I’ll just sue you.”

My response was simple. “Steve, I was just watching your last presentation, and Keynote looks identical to Concurrence – do you own that IP?” Concurrence was a presentation product built by Lighthouse Design, a company I’d help to found and which Sun acquired in 1996. Lighthouse built applications for NeXTSTEP, the Unix based operating system whose core would become the foundation for all Mac products after Apple acquired NeXT in 1996. Steve had used Concurrence for years, and as Apple built their own presentation tool, it was obvious where they’d found inspiration. “And last I checked, MacOS is now built on Unix. I think Sun has a few OS patents, too.” Steve was silent.

And that was the last I heard on the topic.

7:30 PM

Monday, March 08, 2010

1:17 PM

Sunday, March 07, 2010

Slings and Arrows - Theater - The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper:

And I'm not predicting the death of theater; I'm predicting its decline into the total cultural irrelevance of poetry and classical music. Which isn't to say those things are bad -- but when was the last time you had an argument with someone about a poem or a symphony? People used to. They still (rarely) get into arguments about theater...but that's going to stop, and when it does, theater has become inert.

Every city will have its Theater, like it has its Symphony Orchestra and its Opera, with a handful of amateur groups scattered around, entertaining a modest audience of friends and enthusiasts. Nothing wrong with it, but it's not the same as having a conversation with our culture. Which I believe most theater artists would like to be having.

8:11 AM

8:11 AM

Saturday, March 06, 2010

FrontRow » Mike Daisey: An Evening of Higher Learning:

Daisey is kind of like that storied professor. You take their class because you’ve heard so much about how great they are. Never specific traits described but always revered tones. People who took this class would exchange a knowing look as if they had just come out of Plato’s cave and ran into each other. So, you take the class and on the first day, you think what’s the big deal? This prof is like a lot of profs. It is still lecture/discussion followed by test/presentations/papers. Why do people make such a fuss? And slowly it dawns on you that this isn’t a professor in the literal terms – a person professing. The difference is so small it is hard to see at first. It is simply a question of authenticity. This teacher loves their material authentically. There is no noise coming from vanity or ego to muddy up the transfer of knowledge. And they show you how you can love the material, too, without saying it specifically, without professing a love, but living it in front of you. That is the magic created and performed by Mike Daisey and directed by Jean-Michele Gregory.

It wouldn’t be fair to say the evening’s show is just about Brecht, though his stories about Brecht are fascinating. Daisey weaves stories about his own life into the lecture, but the aim and effect are entirely different than a stand-up comic. Not that they aren’t funny. Some are. His stories tend to reveal himself or what he has discovered about himself in the same way that he has discovered things about Brecht. Placed close together with comparisons implied and specified, we learn more about each than we would without the other. That’s good teaching. That’s good theater.

2:47 PM

2:47 PM

Thursday, March 04, 2010

IF YOU ARE A TECH JOURNALIST WRITING ABOUT THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS:

1) My last name is spelled Daisey.

2) I will not be playing the "role" of Steve Jobs. The monologue concerns Steve Jobs' rise and fall and rise, Apple, industrial design, and the human price we are willing to pay for our technology, woven together in a complex narrative. I play no one but myself, speaking to the audience.

3) I'm a monologuist. What I perform is a monologue, not a play.

4) You can visit wikipedia, or use google, and even some of the links on this site to quickly get a sense of my work.

5) This one is for the old-schoolers: If you cut me, I always bleed six colors.

3:36 PM

12:03 PM

FrontRow » Blog Archive » Truth in Wit: Mike Daisey Brings His Juggernaut Monologues to Open the Out of the Loop Festival:

Daisey comes to Dallas this weekend with a scathing critique of American culture at large and its theater culture in particular. It is a culture, he said during a conversation Wednesday, that has allowed us to “corporatize” the American theater. Think of it as an actor’s revolt. His play, How Theater Failed America, takes on the theater world in Daisey’s trademark style: a wandering semi-autobiographic monologue that mixes storylines and farce, serious critical satire and his bombastic sense of humor. Daisey has been described as a cross between Noam Chomsky and Jack Black. Jokes about sex with Paris Hilton cozy up against serious reflections on the craft of Bertolt Brecht. What keeps it all together is Daisey’s dynamism as a performer, an individual with the charisma and charm to make a one-man show feel like a an ensemble epic. Daisey will perform two works at this year’s Out of the Loop Festival: Great Men of Genius, a four part “bio-logue” that tells the life stories of Bertolt Brecht, P.T. Barnum, Nikola Tesla, and L. Rob Hubbard, and How Theater Failed America.

12:03 PM

12:03 PM

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

"This unfortunate aphorism about Art holding the mirror up to nature is deliberately said by Hamlet in order to convince the bystanders of his absolute insanity in all art matters."

—Oscar Wilde, The Decay Of Lying

7:41 PM

Monday, March 01, 2010

3:32 PM

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Daring Fireball: Tits and Apps:

The other thing that bothers me, and ought to bother Apple, is the obvious capriciousness with which these apps were removed. These apps were allowed for about a year and a half. Some developers were prospering by them. And then, boom, they were gone. The reason Apple ought to be concerned about this is that it unsettles all developers — even those whose apps and ideas for future apps were nowhere along the lines of girls-in-bikinis. What developers see here isn’t Apple managing its own brand. What developers see is that the App Store is a shaky foundation upon which to build a business. One day you’re prospering, the next day your app is gone. There are awesome iPhone OS apps that aren’t being built because developers don’t trust Apple not to yank the carpet out from underneath them.

9:02 PM

9:02 PM

GM Kills Hummer, Officially - Hummer - Jalopnik:

GM will officially wind down Hummer operations as a deal with a Chinese automaker stalled over Chinese environmental concerns You gotta love Hummer — a brand so quintessentially American, so brazenly gas-guzzling, that even the Chinese find it offensive.

2:31 PM

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Mike Daisey Hosts THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW at The Greene Space 2010/02/24:

For the first time ever in its 114-year history, THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW will be made available to the masses when Mr. Daisey brings the show to a live studio audience at WNYC's The Greene Space.

This unprecedented opportunity to witness the live production of the heretofore clandestine radio programme will take place on March 12th, April 16th, and May 12th at 7pm. Audiences at home may also partake in this historic moment through a live webcast of the programme at www.wnyc.org/thegreenespace.

Launched in 1896 at the dawn of radio and still transmitted via Tesla Oscillator today, the programme was designed exclusively for Masons of the 3rd Order and higher. Long assumed to be the stuff of conspiracy theories, THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW is in fact the world's longest continuously broadcasting radio programme. Though only heard by a small number of individuals throughout history, those Secret Masters have been the movers and shakers who have shaped the world as it is today.

THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW features a blend of Mr. Daisey's masterful and poignant storytelling with news and interviews with the newsmaking people of our day: bold adventurers, scientists (mad and otherwise), wayward princesses, dashing rogues, and other colorful figures of Our Society. The show covers the latest discoveries in cryptozoology, telluric currents, and advances in both steam and electrical technologies, presenting them in a manner both accessible and informative. Expect trenchant analysis, penetrating wit, and social critique both acid-tongued and whip-smart. Now, at long last, the programme beloved by the Secret Masters will be shared with the world.

When reached for comment, Mr. Daisy said, "From the depths of its black and unknown tunnels to the blinding heights of its terrible skyscrapers, New York City is the best, last bastion of civilization's hopes and terrors. Sending my voice into its ether, night after night, in this impossible metropolis is both an honor and a privilege."

Long-time listener FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT said of the programme, "THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW is the most essential and clear-throated voice for liberty and civilization that can be heard in these dark times."

The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space is located at 44 Charlton Street (at Varick St.), New York.

Tickets are $25 per programme, available at www.wnyc.org/thegreenspace.

3:42 PM

3:42 PM

Ten rules for writing fiction | Books | guardian.co.uk:

Never ride a bike with the brakes on. If something is proving too difficult, give up and do something else. Try to live without resort to per­severance. But writing is all about ­perseverance. You've got to stick at it. In my 30s I used to go to the gym even though I hated it. The purpose of ­going to the gym was to postpone the day when I would stop going. That's what writing is to me: a way of ­postponing the day when I won't do it any more, the day when I will sink into a depression so profound it will be indistinguishable from perfect bliss.

10:37 AM

10:37 AM

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Slashdot Apple Story | 'Obsessed' American Couple Wed At Apple Store:

"The Telegraph reports that an an 'obsessed' American couple, Josh and Ting Li, have become the first to marry inside one of the technology giant's stores saying "iDo" at the city's Apple store on Fifth Avenue, at 12.01 on Valentine's Day in a ceremony dominated with the company's products and references to them. A video shows that the pair, who met in the Apple store, had their priest, dressed as Steve Jobs, read their vows from their iPhones while the rings were tied to a ribbon wrapped around a first generation iPod. Mrs Ling, dressed in a strapless wedding dress, had her vows written on a card that said 'I love you more than this' followed by a picture of an iPhone. 'We got to know each other because Ting was looking to buy an iPod and I managed to strike up a conversation that way,' says Mr. Ting. 'I used to joke that the Apple Store is my church because I am not religious, and I loved everything Apple.'

10:33 PM

3:16 AM

Spotlight on Martin Dockery - News from the IT Awards:

Martin Dockery is a frequent performer in New York’s storytelling scene, appearing on the stages of The Moth, Speakeasy, The Liar Show, Told, Risk!, LES Stories, and Sideshow Goshko. His previous theatrical monologues (developed with director Jean-Michele Gregory) Wanderlust and The Surprise, received critical success in New York as well as in San Francisco, Orlando, London, Toronto, and Winnipeg and garnered numerous awards. Dockery was also a co-creator of the play C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E, which ran on Broadway as The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (heard of it?) and is a seven-time finalist in The Moth’s bi-annual Grandslam Storytelling Championship.

This month Dockery returns to Off-Off-Broadway and we look forward with great interest to his newest solo work, The Bike Trip, debuting on February 25 at the Kraine Theatre as a part of the FRIGID Festival. Martin describes The Bike Trip as is his quest “to understand why the drug LSD has enthralled and terrified so many thousands of people.” On his search to uncover the nature of the psychedelic experience, Dockery journeys through the psychedelic scenes of San Francisco, India and Switzerland. To replicate history’s first ever acid trip, he recreates the bizarre bicycle ride of a Swiss pharmacologist 65 years ago that unexpectedly introduced the world to LSD and altered the way millions of people perceive the nature of consciousness. “The public perception of LSD is frozen in a 1960s tie-dyed haze, and yet its use is as prevalent - and as secretive - as ever,” Dockery explains.

The Bike Trip tells a very personal tale as it attempts to look anew at this most powerful of all psychotropic substances…like The Surprise, it’s an autobiographical storytelling show, performed without a script, making each night unique.” After FRIGID, Dockery will then bring to festivals in Fresno, Phoenix, Orlando, London, Winnipeg, Victoria, & Vancouver among others.

3:15 AM

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

12:50 AM

Clarice, the glorious city, has a tormented history. Several times it decayed, then burgeoned again, always keeping the first Clarice as an unparalled model of every splendor, compared to which the city's recent state can only arouse more sighs at every fading of the stars. . . . In its centuries of decadence, emptied by plagues, it height reduced by collapsing beams and cornices . . . the city slowly became populated again as the survivors emerged from the basements and lairs, in hordes, swarming like rats, driven by their fury to rummage and gnaw, and yet also to collect and patch, like nesting birds. They grabbed everything that could be taken from where it was and put it in another place to serve a different use . . . Put together with odd bits of the useless Clarice, a survivors' Clarice was taking shape . . .The order of the era's succession has been lost; that a first Clarice existed is a widespread belief, but there are no proofs to support it. The capitals would have been in the chicken runs before they were in the temples, the marble urns could have been planted with basil before they were filled with dead bones. Only this is know for sure: a given number of objects is shifted within a given space, at times submerged by a quantity of new objects, at times worn out and not replaced; the rule is to shuffle them each time, then try to assemble them. Perhaps Clarice has always been only a confusion of chipped gimcracks, ill-assorted, obsolete.

Italo Calvino

12:42 AM

12:42 AM

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Jobs of Apple Will Collaborate on a Biography - NYTimes.com:

A handful of presumptive biographers have, over the years, tried to tell the remarkable story of Steven P. Jobs: the youthful visionary who, after being ousted from Apple, the company he helped to found, triumphantly returned to lead a new era of high-tech innovation.

But those efforts lacked one important ingredient: cooperation from Mr. Jobs himself.

Now Apple’s chief executive is set to collaborate on an authorized biography, to be written by Walter Isaacson, the former managing editor of Time magazine, according to two people briefed on the project.

The book, which is in the early planning stages, would cover the entire life of Mr. Jobs, from his youth in the area now known as Silicon Valley through his years at Apple, these people said.

8:34 AM

Monday, February 15, 2010

9:23 PM

7:52 PM

A history of media technology scares, from the printing press to Facebook.:

A respected Swiss scientist, Conrad Gessner, might have been the first to raise the alarm about the effects of information overload. In a landmark book, he described how the modern world overwhelmed people with data and that this overabundance was both "confusing and harmful" to the mind. The media now echo his concerns with reports on the unprecedented risks of living in an "always on" digital environment. It's worth noting that Gessner, for his part, never once used e-mail and was completely ignorant about computers. That's not because he was a technophobe but because he died in 1565. His warnings referred to the seemingly unmanageable flood of information unleashed by the printing press.

Worries about information overload are as old as information itself, with each generation reimagining the dangerous impacts of technology on mind and brain. From a historical perspective, what strikes home is not the evolution of these social concerns, but their similarity from one century to the next, to the point where they arrive anew with little having changed except the label.

7:50 PM

Gawking at Gawker | Slog | The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper:

It's curious that Gawker, which started as a (very good) New York and media industry blog, now has to outsource to hire a New York and media industry editor. Talk about losing your message. For the record, everything that I used to love about Gawker can now be found at The Awl.

5:26 PM

5:26 PM

Health Care: Must-Read Of The Day:

AP reports that insurance companies in at least four states are raising their premiums for individual insurance policies (those that people have to buy themselves, because they don't get coverage from an employer) by 15% or more. To give you a sense of what we are talking about if these rates go into effect, a family of four in Maine (which is a relatively poor state) can expect to pay $1,876 a month--about $22,500 a year--for health insurance, starting in July.

And this is just the beginning of what we can expect to see pretty much everywhere

4:35 PM

4:34 PM

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Essentialism.. - Parabasis:

So first, Celeste Headlee asks the singers of the choir what it's like to sing Spirituals. And one of them talks about how he can't really relate to them on a personal level, but he enjoys singing them. And she's totally taken aback by this statement and has to ask at least one more time something along the lines of "wait a second, you don't feel a special connection to this music?" Now if the singer were white, this'd be nothing to write home about, but it's an interesting moment.

Then she asks which singer was the most exciting to share the stage with and the guy answers "Bob Dylan" and you can kind of hear her head explode through the other side of the radio.

7:30 PM

Friday, February 12, 2010

Concessions - Film - Concessions - The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper:

Did you see the Super Bowl commercial with the beavers? It's about this beaver, see, and he plays the violin (WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?) out on his beaver stump in the swamp. But he wants more out of life, so he goes and gets his laptop (SEE ABOVE) and searches for "violinist" on Monster.com, and apparently they advertise for street-busker positions (NO, THEY DON'T!), so he heads to the big city, delights passersby in the subway station, auditions for a panel of sour-faced old white people, plays Carnegie Hall or some shit, and then begins an interspecies sexual relationship with a blond tramp who probably just wants to eat him and wear his skin for a hat.

10:46 AM

10:46 AM

Thursday, February 11, 2010

12:16 AM

12:16 AM

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Towards A World of Smaller Books — Crooked Timber:

I think you can push this argument further. I would estimate that about 80% of the non-academic non-fiction books that I do not find a complete waste of time (i.e. good books in politics, economics etc – I can’t speak to genres that I don’t know) are at least twice as long as they should be. They make an interesting point, and then they make it again, and again, padding it out with some quasi-relevant examples, and tacking on a conclusion about What It All Means which the author clearly doesn’t believe herself. The length of the average book reflects the economics of the print trade and educated guesses as to what book-buyers will actually pay for, much more than it does the actual intellectual content of the book itself.

3:29 PM

---

Mike's site is powered by Blogger. | Site design by John Tynes. | Read our privacy policy. | All images and text on this site come from many sources, and belong to their creators. | If you see work you've created here please contact the site if attribution or removal is desired.