Month: January 2005

According to Babelfish and Google, “The Virtual Enclosures” translated into Italian is “Le Recinzioni Virtuali.” Another site says “Gli Allegati Virtuali.” Or according to Babelfish, the entire title is “Dai terreni comunali virtuali alle recinzioni virtuali: Giro e Contatore-Giro nell’età delle informazioni.”

I was recently contacted by an Italian publisher who wants to translate my Virtual Enclosures article into Italian and publish it in a book and possibly also online. Cool.

I have a natural interest in the process of translation, from largely a hermeneutic persective. From one perspective, to translate a text is to do violence to that text. But from another, it will make my writings accessible to more people. This is a good thing. I wish I could read Italian so I could see how my thoughts flow in that language.

There is supposedly a new internet audio recording from “wanted terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” with some extra spin about the recording on cnn.com. From the article:

The speaker attacked the Iraqi interim government as a tool used by the “Americans to promote this lie that is called democracy … You have to be careful of the enemy’s plots that involve applying democracy in your country and confront these plots, because they only want to do so to … give the rejectionists the rule of Iraq. And after fighting the Baathists … and the Sunnis, they will spread their insidious beliefs, and Baghdad and all the Sunni areas will become Shiite. Even now, the signs of infidelity and polytheism are on the rise.”

So of course I am suspicious of the spin here. First of all, I wonder about the translation. But this is just normal hermeneutical suspicion. But look how it is being spun: one is either for American Democracy(tm), or one is a radical muslim terrorist.

But al-Zarqawi raises an interesting point: one must be careful of the American government’s spin on terms like “democracy” and “freedom.” As is obvious, the US is not a democracy; in theory it is a republic, which is not the same thing. The American govt rhetoric of “spreading freedom” and “bringing democracy to the world” is just a code word for globalization and forced imposition of neoliberal economic policies.

So from where I stand, al-Zarqawi is right to be suspicious of American endeavors in Iraq. Obviously I disagree with at least some of his theological convictions, but that’s to be expected. One cannot embrace the dualism of “you’re with us or you’re with The Terrorists(tm).” It’s more complicated than that.

Well, given the huge freakin winter storm that is pending, on top of the subzero temperatures, this has been by at least one order of magnitude the busiest day I’ve ever seen at work. Normally, we have about 13 call receivers working, and if it’s really busy there will be 8 or 10 people on hold. An average day gives us maybe 1100 calls, the busiest day I’d seen was 1700.

When I arrived at noon today, there were 30 call receivers working, 70 calls on hold, and we’d already taken over 2000 calls before noon. By now, we’re pushing 4000 pretty hard. Wow. At least today is going fast. ;-)

I was planning on writing a few entries today to catch up, but we’re actually too busy for that now. This is the first lull I’ve seen yet today. Maybe I’ll have more time this evening, now that everyone is home and is braced for the storm. More anon.

Apparently, the FCC is having hearings across America to “Give Americans the chance to report how well TV and radio are serving their communities”. Ummm, yeah. Serving the communities, or serving the corporate masters?

I may have to go to this….

Read 20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the US. A nice, concise summary which proves nothing (not that anything can be proven when it comes to voting in America), but at least makes one think.

I’ve been frustrated with my body lately. It started 3 weeks or so ago when I hurt my right shoulder hauling logs at our Yule fire. It got worse over the course of the next week, which prompted me to go see a chiropractor. He gave me an adjustment, and as I’ve heard is common in such instances, the spine realignment triggered a huge energy release. I think most of what I’ve been experiencing since then is related. The shoulder has healed; I’m sure I just tweaked a ligament or something. It’s fine now. But I’ve dealt with nagging sicknesses; headaches, sinus problems, nausea, and this morning I awoke with a slight ache in my right ear. None of these are major; they are all more just nagging annoyances. But I’m getting very tired of them.

Another energy shift with all of this is me enacting a change in my eating habits. I’ve gone back and forth with healthy and unhealthy eating patterns my entire life. These days I generally eat much more nutritiously, but I still eat too much, and the times at which I eat are far from ideal. I’m a night owl, and my food intake reflects that. So 16 days ago I reinstated an old, healthy habit of mine; no more eating after 9pm. It’s been surprisingly easy in terms of will. Usually I really struggle with it. So I’m glad to see myself making this real.

But physically, I’ve always felt best when I eat well AND exercise well. Yeah, duh. So because I haven’t been feeling as well since I switched my eating habits, I haven’t exercised. So it’s time to get back on that. Ideally, I’d like to take a walk every day, and get to the gym 3x per week. That’s a pattern that works well for me, and I think it’s the next step for me towards better physicality.

Well, like so many people, I’ve been intrigued by the data coming back from the Huygens probe as it landed on the surface of Titan. This is certainly an impressive engineering achievement, and it also bodes well for science. Titan is one of the most compelling solar bodies in the solar system. Very cool.

But the Huygens probe is, obviously, named after the 17th century scientist, Christian Huygens. I am most familiar with his discovery of the law of entrainment, a law that has become central to my reality. The essence of this law is that a) the universe vibrates; and b) these vibrations seek to harmonize with one another. This is a proven law of physics, it is not mere mystical or new age theory. It works for all forms of energy exchange. I find that such exchanges where entrainment occurs tend to amplify the energy exchanged; it is a form of synergy. In my view, these kinds of synergistic energy exchanges feed our souls. I’m thinking of playing music with people, listening to music, sports, sex, or any other way you can imagine.

Though the Huygens probe is very cool, let’s give props to the lasting impact of Huygens.

Anyone who reads this article in The Globe, and who also has been reading this space, will find the following comments very familiar:

One of the best things about this approach is that Firefox doesn’t suffer from any of the annoying pop-ups and malware that make using Internet Explorer such a pain. Since the browser uses completely different software, none of the usual tools that hackers have used to infiltrate Internet Explorer work with Firefox. Although this might change as the browser becomes more popular, the open-source nature of the project means that fixes will likely be easier to make and will also be available much faster .

Firefox has a number of features that make it obvious how little Internet Explorer has changed over the past several years. One of the most popular is the use of “tabs,” which allow a user to open multiple pages within the same window. You can set Firefox so that when you click on a link it opens that link in a new tab, and the tabs you have open are grouped together in a tab toolbar at the top of your browser window. You can store a group of tabs and open them all when you load Firefox.

Other alternative browsers, such as Opera, have this feature, too, but they don’t share one other thing Firefox has going for it — its adaptability. One benefit of the open-source format is that any programmer who wants to can write a bit of software called an “extension,” which adds features to the browser. There are hundreds of these extensions listed already at Firefox’s home page (http://getfirefox.com), including everything from a plug-in that lets you play music from your browser toolbar to one that lets you search an on-line dictionary by clicking on a word.

So yes, this solution is becoming so obvious that even the mainstream media is starting to get it. Good to see.

If you haven’t already, go get Firefox, you fools!

…or at least it feels that way sometimes. It is easy to forget just how much progress has been made on a large project when you’re in the midst of it, having come a long way but still with a long way to go. This is how it’s been with the Freakwitch project for the better part of six weeks. Without the ability to use the studio computer, we’ve had to take the opportunity to write some new songs. It seems we’ve also taken the opportunity to ground some energy.

Well, tonight I feel like this blockage has been released. I have now restored the computer to its pre-sata glory. This means everything works, no pops and clicks in audio, so Matt and I can continue album production. But we still don’t have a sane backup strategy, so in that sense I’ve declared defeat. But there is a new strategy in place that should take us several steps forward.

I ordered a hard drive enclosure that is compatible with SATA drives. This way, I can store data onto this same drive, and connect it both to the studio computer and to my laptop, and edit music from either computer. This means that a)data will be backed up in a sane way, and b) I’ll be able to work from home, which should speed things up in terms of album production. The problem is the first one sent to me was defective, so I am sending it back to newegg and am contemplating ordering it elsewhere, since they are less than helpful with getting me one that actually works.

In addition, I ordered an audio interface for the laptop which will allow me to record audio, monitor 24-bit audio through headphones or through my speakers, and generally make audio with the laptop wherever I happen to be. It should be here early next week. I also ordered a RAM upgrade for the laptop, which I expect will speed it up dramatically. Now my laptop will have more RAM (768MB) than any other machine I have.

So in terms of production, we are back where we were 6 weeks ago. But from another perspective, we are now poised for the next round of work. Progress sometimes runs in spirals, like so many other energy patterns…

The increased amount of technical gadgetry in my life has been on my mind. The geek in me is of course delighted, while the luddite is somewhat alarmed. But regardless, these gadgets are tools that need to be judged by how they are used. I’ve always had an interest in photography, dating back to my high school days where I displayed a talent with finding interesting shots with a video camera in my high school’s TV studio. So I’ve been playing more with photography since I got my digital camera. I took several shots today, and liked these two:

These images are unprocessed apart from resizing. One of my next goals is to figure out how to process images in a visually appealing way. I have some nice tools at my disposal, it’s just a matter of practice and some reading. Great, yet another hobby for my Abundant Free Time.

On a related note, two friends of mine have recently started blogs. One of them, a professional photographer and my occasional political theory sparring partner, has created a photojournalist blog. Michael is a talented photographer, you should check it out. Another one is so far exploring social problems, economic problems, and their relations to science and/or mystical thinking. At least that’s my interpretation of psichron. But both of these look very promising to this reader.