One Trillion Dollars Visualized

A little perspective on all these zeroes . . .

End-of-week wrapup

Yes, folks, it's the end of the week for me. I only have internet access when I'm at work (thanks to a dead power cord and my penchant for taking things apart, I don't have a laptop anymore) and I'm only at work until 2pm today. So here's some fun to keep you going: 1 video, 1 article, and 1 blog to follow. If you ration yourself, this should last all weekend.

The video:

A russian version of Winnie the Pooh. No, not Disney with Russian dub or subtitles. A Russian version, which is ever so much cuter than the other ones.

The article:

Tom Wright has a terrific piece on the recent antics by American Episcopalians. (HT The Gadfly). You should read the whole thing for yourself, but here are a few of the gems:

The appeal to justice as a way of cutting the ethical knot in favour of including active homosexuals in Christian ministry simply begs the question. Nobody has a right to be ordained: it is always a gift of sheer and unmerited grace.

We must insist, too, on the distinction between inclination and desire on the one hand and activity on the other — a distinction regularly obscured by references to “homosexual clergy” and so on. We all have all kinds of deep-rooted inclinations and desires. The question is, what shall we do with them? One of the great Prayer Book collects asks God that we may “love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise”. That is always tough, for all of us. Much easier to ask God to command what we already love, and promise what we already desire. But much less like the challenge of the Gospel.

Contrary to some who have recently adopted the phrase, there is already a “fellowship of confessing Anglicans”. It is called the Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church is now distancing itself from that fellowship

The blog to follow: How Books Got Their Titles.

For example, under "While England Slept by Winston Churchill" you will discover that

Churchill suggested The Years of the Locust, but the cable operator garbled the message and it arrived as The Years of the Lotus. Putnam’s were puzzled. They knew that the lotus was a plant famous for its soporific properties, and, in an attempt to give a sense of this, settled on While England Slept.

Dorothy Sayers on so-called "Women's Work"

Just finished two essays by Dorothy Sayers, collected in the little volume "Are Women Human?" No real response yet, other than to say I liked this line of argument :

Let us accept the idea that women should stick to their own jobs -- the jobs they did so well in the good old days before they started talking about votes and women's rights. Let us return to the Middle Ages and ask what we should get then in return for certain political and educational privileges which we should have to abandon.

It is a formidable list of jobs: the whole of the spinning industry, the whole of the dyeing industry, the whole of the weaving industry. The whole catering industry and -- which would not please Lady Astor, perhaps -- the whole of the nation's brewing and distilling. All the preserving, pickling, and bottling industry, all the bacon-curing. And (since in those days a man was often absent from home for months together on war or business) a very large share in the management of landed estates. Here are the women's jobs -- and what has become of them? They are all being handled by men. It is all very well to say that woman's place is the home -- but modern civilization has taken all these pleasant and profitable activities out of the home, where the women looked after them, and handed them over to big industry, to be directed and organised by men at the head of large factories. Even the dairy-maid in her simple bonnet has gone, to be replaced by a male mechanic in charge of a mechanical milking plant.

. . .

I am not complaining that the brewing and baking were taken over by the men. If they can brew and bake as well as women or better, then by all means let them do it. But they cannot have it both ways. If they are going to adopt the very sound principle that the job should be done by the person who does it best, then that rule must be applied universally. If the women make better office-workers than men, they must have the office work. If any individual women is able to make a first-class lawyer, doctor, architect, or engineer, then she must be allowed to try her hand at it. Once lay down the rule that the job comes first and you throw that job open to every individual, man or woman, fat or thin, tall or short, ugly or beautiful, who is able to do that job better than the rest of the world.

Pop v. Coke

Someone did an informal study showing the geographic distribution of generic names for soft drinks (pop, coke, soda), broken down by county. Here are the results:

Two interesting notes: 1) There are a handful of counties where "other" predominates. Who calls soda "other"? Actually, if you to know the specific answers, just go to www.popvsoda.com and look at the individual state results. It's only slightly more edifying that reading YouTube comments. 2) The most colorful want (i.e conflicted) states appear to be Nevada and South Carolina, with New Mexico running third. Nevada and New Mexico make sense ... western states are more likely to have an amalgam of cultures, and so differences will about. But S. Carolina? Apparently, it's the convergence point of New Englander "Soda," Southern "Coke," and Yankee "Pop." The real mind boggler is Missouri. What's with that pocket of "Soda" speakers on the Mississipi river?

In a age of free, what can you sell?

People have been making a big fuss about Chris Anderson's new book, Free. Malcolm Gladwell thinks it's bunk. Chris Anderson, understandably, likes it. My friends have been cheerfully exchanging links on the issue, and I found this one from KK particularly interesting. (HT David Hoos)

The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. . . . The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free.

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.

When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

Well, what can't be copied?

KK goes on to list 8 "generatives" that can't be sold, including Immediacy, Personalization, Authenticity, and Findablity. My personal favorite, though, given my philosophical leanings, was Embodiment.

At its core the digital copy is without a body. You can take a free copy of a work and throw it on a screen. But perhaps you'd like to see it in hi-res on a huge screen? Maybe in 3D? PDFs are fine, but sometimes it is delicious to have the same words printed on bright white cottony paper, bound in leather. Feels so good. What about dwelling in your favorite (free) game with 35 others in the same room? There is no end to greater embodiment. Sure, the hi-res of today -- which may draw ticket holders to a big theater -- may migrate to your home theater tomorrow, but there will always be new insanely great display technology that consumers won't have. Laser projection, holographic display, the holodeck itself! And nothing gets embodied as much as music in a live performance, with real bodies. The music is free; the bodily performance expensive.

I buy my cd's used, or I get online versions of music from Lala.com. On the other hand, I paid $65 a ticket to go stand in line all day in Vancouver so that I can stand in a crowd of sweaty people all evening listening to U2 play in concert. He's right -- the live performance, with me standing less that 20 yards from The Edge himself, is that for which I'm willing to shell out REAL money.

Sneaky Disney

I watched Disney's "Bolt" at a friend's house this weekend, and was struck by some very sneaky work in the opening credits (no, not hiding obscenities in the animation). Take a look:

Notice anything? Yep, that *was* Steamboat Willie as the LOGO for "Walt Disney Animation Studios." (now a division of the Walt Disney Company, created after restructuring in '07). Now, I'm not a lawyer and I certainly don't have specialized knowledge in copyright issues, but this seems to open the way for Disney to trademark Steamboat Willie instead of relying on copyright protections.