Assorted Jimmy

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tigers tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood
Giving my strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there
Beneath the touch of Times unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

Good ol’ Lessig, fighting the good fight:

My wife had just given birth to our third child. On the morning of the child’s third day, doctors were worried about jaundice. By the evening, the child had fallen into a state of severe lethargy. We called the doctor. He wanted a report in two hours. If she did not improve, he wanted her taken to the emergency room. By midnight she had not improved, and so I bundled her into the car seat and raced to nearby Children’s Hospital.

As I sat waiting for the doctor, I began reading an article I had found through Google about jaundice and its dangers. Fortunately, the piece was published by the American Family Physician, which makes its articles available freely on the Internet. And so with an increasing feeling of panic, I read about the condition–hyperbilirubinemia–that the doctor feared our child had developed.

I reached a critical part of the article. It referred to a table. I turned the page to see the table. The table was missing. In its place was a notice: “The rightsholder did not grant rights to reproduce this item in electronic media.” No one had licensed the table for free distribution. Distribution was thus blocked. “Have your lawyer call my lawyer,” the article seemingly urged. “We’ll work something out.”

Read “For The Love of Culture”, Google, Copyright, and Our Future

I gonna drive across America; move me window at leisurely pace; sketch me rhymes whilst listening to dubstep.

Internets be new thing. Internets be good thing? Internets be bad thing?

Probably neither.

How is the internet changing the way we think?

I can’t believe my luck!
Can’t believe we’re riding in this awesome truck.
You are my buttercup
You’re the one I love, You’re the one I fuck.
And every single time that I see you smile it makes me feel so fine.
There will come a day when i’ll be gone.
I hope you smile on yesterday.

Darryl Hall from Hall and Oates gives good interview. SeBeNoFa.
Choice quotes:

“In my uncle’s time, you were a minister. Two generations before that you were a warlock. Now you’re me.”

“We are not an equal duo, and never have been. I’m 90% and he’s 10%, and that’s the way it is. And he’d say the same thing. He has plenty of ideas, he’s a finisher, he’s a good musician, he is an attention-to-detail person. He is overshadowed by me because I’m such a strong vocal personality. I also always believed that you can only have one singer in a band. The ping-pong thing doesn’t work. We’re not the Bobbsey Twins. He stands there, he’s the quiet one– it’s sort of like Jagger-Richards or something. And I’m out there banging away.”

Read more.

Let’s imagine that Coldplay and Nickleback have a child together.

The child, a boy, is born into a loving environment and develops normally until the day he turns 14. On that day he announces that he will be silent. He will not talk. He will only listen. He doesn’t say why, but everyone knows that it’s an act in pursuit of wisdom. What a precocious child!

One week prior to his 21st birthday, the child announces that he will return to speaking again, and that he will use the party to speak his first words in 7 years.

Everyone is excited and even a little nervous. When the time arrives, the child stands in front of his friends and parents (Coldplay and Nickleback) and surprises everyone by carrying a guitar and singing instead of speaking. This song is his first words.

I wrote a song called “End of the Train Song”. It came from a worry I had. Maybe you have faced this too- this feeling that comes from a question: If I commit to my girl, am I putting the stallion to pasture? If I come home, is it the end of the train song?