Philip Greenspun lent his digital camera to Peter Menzel for a trip to Kuwait and Iraq. Menzel came back with a vial of Iraqi crude oil for Philip (prompting the one-liner, “I’m thus one of the very few Americans who can truly say that he got what the U.S. Army went to Iraq for!”), and some amazing pictures of the work done to extinguish the oil well fires, complete with unexploded (and exploded!) cluster bombs, Halliburton subsidiaries (Boots and Coots, not Brown and Root), camels, and drowning wildlife.
The Year of RSS, Part III: US News and World Report
US News and World Report gets an RSS feed, including the now ubiquitous white on orange XML button (
) and an explanation. Their old content (> 14 days) will live behind a pay wall, so be careful with your links, but still, it’s nice to see another major content provider hop the bandwagon. Thanks to Jenny the Shifted Librarian for the link, who also helpfully points out that many libraries will help route around the pay wall by providing the older content for free.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem
Listened to the family-and-friends-only CD that the Suspicious Cheese Lords made (back when I was in the group), Incipit, on the way in this morning. It’s a schizoid disc, half devoted to a bunch of new music members of the group wrote for a theater production of Romeo and Juliet that we recorded but which was never used, half to new and old lamentations. The centerpiece and title piece of the album is Thomas Tallis’s Lamentations of Jeremiah, which was the musical work the group was originally formed to perform and which is still in my head. A fascinatingly complex work, with intricate five voice polyphony and loads of double meanings. The text, Jeremiah’s lament for the fall of Jerusalem, can be read as Tallis’s lament for the suppression and demise of Catholicism, his tradition of faith, in England.
We performed this piece many times, but almost always during Holy Week, the week leading up to Easter, as part of Tenebrae and Holy Friday services. Here the Lamentations would take on additional meaning in the Christian context of lamenting the sinfulness of man and the attendant sacrifice of Christ. But despite all the lamenting, these were always happy times. The group would perform two or three times during the week, steep itself in the religious tradition, and get to be part of some truly moving observances of faith. And spend a lot of time together as friends.
The Lamentations have a double meaning for me as well, since I first sang them with the Virginia Glee Club under John Liepold in his first season. Favorite memories of performing the piece: a morning performance on a spring break trip after a night in New Orleans at a private school with an, um, impaired group (during the course of the fifteen minute work, we sank a full minor third under pitch); and performing it with seven or eight good friends in resonant stairwells and arcades in academic buildings and on the Lawn.
So this piece with its deep message of despair came to be a familiar friend and a comfort to me over the years. There is, I think, something to be said for the liturgical emphasis during Lent of recognizing grief as a key part of the church year, and as a necessary precursor to the joy of Easter.
CrazyAppleRumors: “Apple Acquires Sandwich”
CrazyAppleRumors has been having a field day with the Apple/Universal thing, starting Monday with “Apple Talks with Universal Not Substantive. Really Not Substantive,” and proceeding through Tuesday’s “Apple Considers Buying Telemundo.” But they’ve outdone themselves (or beat the joke into the ground) with yesterday’s “Apple Acquires Sandwich.” My favorite part (’cause it reminds me of me) is the analyst reaction section:
Marcus Gregory, Chief Investment Strategist for the State of California Teacher’s Pension Plan, said “Our holding in Apple is predicated on the company’s large cash reserves. I would hate to see those reserves frittered away on sandwich acquisitions.
“Now, granted, at the $5.75 purchase price of the tuna fish sandwich, Apple would need to acquire… five plus… carry the… well, a whole hell of a lot of sandwiches to make a dent in $5 billion, but it’s the principle of thing.”
The New York Times’ David Pogue was bullish on the move.
“I myself enjoyed a tuna fish sammich, I call ’em ‘sammiches,’ just the other day,” Pogue said.
“And, you know, they’re damn tasty.”
In more serious news, the balance sheet and statement of cash flows accompanying Apple’s latest quarterly earnings statement peg the company’s cash and short term investments at $4.53 billion, up from $4.4 billion at the end of the last quarter. But the company posted a $4 million operating loss, which turned into $14 million profit after interest income. Cutting it close, Fred.
I feel all indie
I wanted to add a new CD to the “Current Listening” section below (see my actual home page, all you RSS viewers who are missing this feature), but I was stymied because Amazon doesn’t list it. But go check out Michael, the Athens, GA emo-pop band, and PayPal the album. It’s pretty damned good.
Apple: “Nuh-uh”
Regarding the persisting rumors that, despite all fiscal evidence to the contrary, it is in talks to buy Universal Music: Apple broke its long standing policy of not commenting on rumors yesterday to offer this gem (annotated by yours truly):
“Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has never made any offer to invest in or acquire a major music company. The press statements this morning attributed to Vivendi board member Claude Bebear are untrue, as Mr. Bebear has confirmed in a later report,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Beyond these comments, we will abide by Apple’s policy of not commenting on rumors.”
In other words, yeah, guys, do your math next time. Reported via Macintouch, which has RSS but no permalinks, so you have to scroll down—and the information disappears tomorrow. One step at a time, I guess.
The Year of RSS, Part II
My good friend Craig Pfeifer moved his blog over the last week or two. (What does this have to do with the subject line? Work with me for a minute.) I didn’t notice until today because I was working too much to do any surfing, and because I moved to using an aggregator at work instead of manually clicking through my blogroll. So Craig’s kissoff to Blogspot went unnoticed for a few days.
Craig has RSS now. Of the folks in the Friends section of my blogroll, six of the ten syndicate their content via RSS. (Two of the four remaining are on Blogspot, a third is actually a newspaper column.) In all, of the 44 sites on my blogroll, 31 offer an RSS feed.
And these are mostly friends and random acquaintances.
RSS. Coming soon to a blog near you.
Correction 4/24: Greg has an RSS feed and had it when I posted this. Sorry for my brain lapse.
Sunday: the Suspicious Cheese Lords via satellite
My friends in the group in which I sang in Washington, DC, the Suspicious Cheese Lords, will make their satellite radio debut on Sirius XM this Sunday (scroll to the bottom), in promotion of their new album
Maestro di Capella. Go listen.
Suspicious Cheese Lords In Concert
Vox – XM 112
Noon ET
The early-music ensemble Suspicious Cheese Lords join us live at the XM Studios for a special performance of sacred music.
We’re not totally nuts
For those scratching their heads and wondering whether Lisa and I have lost our minds, what with the bricklaying and so on, I would like to report that we don’t always do everything ourselves. Case in point: yesterday we had a tree surgeon out to remove some damaged branches from the enormous evergreen in our back yard. The branch removal mostly got the lowest hanging branches, which has the not entirely coincidental effect of making the back yard a lot brighter.
Safari beta 2: still some issues
So the second public beta of Apple’s new browser, Safari, has been released. I was curious to see if any of the display glitches it showed on my site had been fixed.
As you can see from the adjoining image, the answer is “not quite.” Still outstanding: my date titles should render in small caps, and my post titles should render in a larger sans serif font. I’m starting to think that the post title problem is my fault, though, for using a misplaced DIV to trick Internet Explorer into rendering my page correctly. At least my page renders completely in Safari now.
Blog blockage
I’ve only been posting in fits and spurts for the past week, and I think I know why: I’ve had a ton of deadlines that have kept me from writing anything good (even when I wanted to); and whenever I want to write something in the morning, the specter of the war raises its head and makes me want to write something else. Anything else.
I need to write something most days to jump start my brain, but writing about the war, or about the domestic and international politics that surround it, either enrages or depresses me most days. I’ll keep working on it. If history is any indication, I’ll suddenly have a bunch to say after I finish my next deadline.
New Hooblogger: Kim Everitt
New addition to Hooblogs: Kim Everitt, a student in the College of Arts and Sciences graduating this year, whose blog goes by a certain shade of [green]. This is of course interesting for two reasons: not only is it, like Mr. Greene’s blog, another Blogspot blog with “green” in the URL, but it also features brackets ([]) in the title.
Of course, her more compelling claim to fame is being linked by Dave Barry. You’ll have to take her word for it, as Dave’s archives (being hosted by Blogspot) are not working, and you’ll have to go to her home page and scroll to April 1 to take her word for it, as her permalinks (also hosted by Blogspot) aren’t working quite right either.
Somewhere in here there’s a lesson about getting what you pay for, but I’m not quite sure what it is.
Anyway, welcome aboard, Kim.
Crazy week
Lots of things going on this week that will probably keep my blogging to a minimum. While I’m sidelined, check out any of the fine folks in the blogroll.
Happy birthday, TJ
Thomas Jefferson was born 260 years ago today in my home state of Virginia. Ten years ago, I spent the day at Monticello with the Virginia Glee Club, singing on the Today Show (and standing at a urinal next to Willard Scott, but that’s another story (and, speaking of other stories—Aven, if you have the photo of Stancil, Tyler and Scott holding Katie Couric aloft as she wears her VMHLB cap, I’d pay money for a scanned copy!)), before riding on a bus to Washington to sing at a ceremony at the Jefferson Memorial and shake Bill Clinton’s hand.
For those of you who don’t know who Thomas Jefferson is (e.g. apparently most members of the current Presidential administration and leaders of the Justice Department), he wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, was ambassador to France, and founded the University of Virginia. Oh yeah and he was president too.
In the spirit of Jefferson, then, a few of his words:
- “I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.”
- “If there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.”
- “I have much confidence that we shall [Col 2] proceed successfully for ages to come, and that, contrary to the principle of Montesquieu it will be seen that the larger the extent of country, the more firm its republican structure, if founded, not on conquest, but in principles of compact and equality.”
- “The government of a nation may be usurped by the forcible intrusion of an individual into the throne. But to conquer its will, so as to rest the right on that, the only legitimate basis, requires long acquiescence and cessation of all opposition.”
- “Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.”
- “The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.”
- “It should ever be held in mind that insult and war are the consequences of a want of respectability in the national character.”
Oh, and check out this year’s winners of the Jefferson Muzzles awards, given to those who seek to abridge freedom of speech and press. This year’s awards included many of the usual suspects at this blog, including everyone’s favorite singing ex-senator, John Ashcroft—and the 107th US Congress, who passed the PATRIOT Act.
Follow up to Apple and Universal
Generally lots of positive follow up to the article I wrote Friday about Apple’s possible purchase of Universal. A few of the comments, and some of the other articles on the subject, touched on the one question I didn’t hit: digital rights management, or DRM.
DRM is technology intended to restrict access to digital content so that the rights of copyright holders are enforced. Unfortunately, most current implementations of DRM support the rights of the copyright owners to the detriment of the rights of the purchasers of the content. Apple, mercifully, has so far avoided the issue by implicitly encouraging the use of MP3 (a DRM-free music format) through products like iTunes and the iPod, rather than pushing a proprietary format which could be extended to restrict use of the content (e.g. Quicktime).
Emphasis on so far. If Apple purchases a major content provider, the temptation to go over to DRM may become too great to avoid. After all, it will have the bottom line of Universal to think about. Or will this be Apple’s opportunity to prove that a content business model without DRM can actually work?
God, I hope so.