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Posted on Sep 1, 2010

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What that meaning has turned out to be

From Mike Barthel's "The American Experiment on the Last Day of the War" in The Awl:

[...] Two years ago, it seemed like ending the war in Iraq would fix America, just like it seemed like electing Barack Obama would fix America. Both things are an improvement for the country, but we're still dissatisfied. Why?

Well, that “fix” is not something we can find in policy. It's only to be found in the way we think about ourselves. Do we like what America's doing? Do we think it is, in some way, “American”? If so, how? That's a hard debate to have.

It would certainly be easier to pile up symbolic acts and hope they accumulate into a meaningful heap. But that won't work, and resolving our own ongoing conflict is a debate we need to have. Otherwise, the great American experiment will have to be abandoned, and then we'll be just another country.

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David Beach's Blog: Developing for Android

Like it or not, Android is huge. Creating an open source mobile platform was one of the smarter things Google has done. It's too bad that they haven't done that great of a job doing it. Android has succeeded despite Google. In fact it's safe to say that Android is successful for one primary reason. The iPhone is only available on AT&T. If the iPhone was on Verizon a year ago. Android would be no where near as popular. But since this has yet to happen, Android has become a huge market that isn't going away.

If you are a company that builds/has iPhone apps, you better be thinking about developing for Android ASAP. But you should also be prepared for the pitfalls.
An iPhone app developer’s diary, and some thoughts on Android » Nieman Journalism Lab

If someone out there is interested in volunteering to help build an Android (or WebOS, or BlackBerry, or Windows Phone, or Symbian) version, I’d love to hear from you. We’ve got no animus against other platforms; we just don’t yet see an audience big enough to justify our scant resources.
Jay Rosen on the media: Seven questions for Jay Rosen | The Economist

Look: the alternative to chasing clicks is building trust and an editorial brand. "What people want" arguments don't impress me. I think anyone with a half a brain knows that you have to listen to demand and give people what they have no way to demand. You have to listen to them, and assert your authority from time to time, because listening well is what gives you the authority to recommend what is not immediately in demand.
Musopen Wants to Give Classical Music to the Public Domain | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Museopen is looking to solve a difficult problem: while symphonies written by Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius, and Tchaikovsky are in the public domain, many modern arrangements and sound recordings of those works are copyrighted. That means that even after purchasing a CD or collection of MP3s of this music, you may not be able to freely exercise all the rights you'd associate with works in the public domain, like sharing the music using a peer-to-peer network or using the music in a film project.
This Is Your Brain on Technophobia. Any Questions? | techyum ::

[...] The sickness, as I see it, is not tech addiction but consumerism. Disagree with me? Then explain why all discussions of technology in the media are governed by the assumption that there’s an “average” consumer — and that said consumer is professional, college-educated, middle-class, and presumably white? And then explain why, if you hang out at the emergency room in East Oakland at three in the morning, you see a hell of a lot more people texting than you’ll ever see at a high-end cafe?

These panicked discussions of technology focus on the behavior of those perceived as having average interests and “typical” behaviors. But this very idea is bankrupt, and assumes a life made fantastically rich by such “average” interests — by implication, said interests being family, God, and middle-of-the-road politics.

But I contain multitudes, bitch. What about the people, like me, for whom learning and reading were agony until computers made it interactive? [...]
Poor 'Scott Pilgrim': Michael Cera Scares The Olds and Irritates The Youngs - The Awl

So on the one hand, Cera is the target of older critics that don't get his brand of "humor," and on the other Cera plays the same character in every single movie and we really don't have a good young 21st-century leading man, yet. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is too peripheral; Robert Pattinson and Nicholas Hoult and Daniel Radcliffe and William Moseley too English and too tied to their main roles. Who else? Josh Hutcherson is too young-Michael J. Fox. Max Records isn't getting any work. But the demand for a real, non-vampire, truly millennial male star is there, and it's only a matter of time before we get someone better.