Man of Leisure

DJ Ted Stevens - A Series of Tubes

Please do not miss this. You will be sad if you do.

Internet is dead. Long live the Intertubes!

Senator Ted Stevens' (R-AK) ranting has given us a new way to refer to the interwebs: Intertubes!

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially...

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

So then, there it is: the Internet is officially the Intertubes. Here's the definition that I submitted to Urban Dictionary:

"Intertubes, n. A series of tubes that move information around the world via computer."

As a side note, it's amazing how many morons there are out there. Perform a Google blog search on the word "intertube", and you'll find 769 entries, 768 of which are using "intertube" when they should be using "inner tube". Stunning.

Language, Gender, Categories

A post on "Interesting Thing of The Day" has me thinking about categories this afternoon, as I gaze out the window at the darkening sky. Of course, Aristotle is the master of the categorical approach to knowledge. His work, The Categories, is pretty much the reference guide to thinking about how sensible objects relate to one another. If you'd like to dip in, it's available in full through Project Gutenberg at this address.

The ITOTD post begins with an exposition on language, particularly how non-English languages often group words by gender or some other category:

Lots of languages assign gender to nouns, and speakers tend to regard these odd inconsistencies as “just one of those things”—something one must memorize when learning a language, without trying to read too much significance into it. But nearly all languages have some implicit method of grouping certain nouns into categories, and some of these category divisions, which go way beyond the two or three so-called genders, are extremely thought-provoking.

In English, though we don't categorize words by gender, we still sometimes think of qualities of things as being gender-related. For example, it's jarring to hear a woman described as "handsome", or a man as "pretty" - it's considered a form of gender-bending. Since we don't assign gender in the English language, there must be a mental construct that causes such ideas to lead to cognitive dissonance.

William Safire today has a bit in his column about the word "crony" and how it's associated in the mind with males. British and Australian men use the term "mates" to describe the (male) fellows they hang out with. And yet, "guys" is a generic term that, at least on the college campus where I work, is perfectly acceptable to use with a group consisting of mixed gender. Hmmm.

Tagging - an idea at the core of Web 2.0, as well, is a mental construct. Not unlike the original goal of Yahoo to provide an index to Internet that was humanly understandable, individuals have begun to create their own indexes to the Web, using tags. Tags are little more than categories to help humans fit the myriad of websites, essays, and online resources into our own mental constructs. Online tools such as Del.icio.us and Technorati are dedicated to helping people create, manage and share their personal tagging sets, sometimes called "folksonomy".

Each of my entries here on my blog is categorized, sometimes under multiple categories, because there can be several ideas located in just one entry. For example, this entry already fits under "language", "philosophy", "great books program", "delicious", and "web/tech" (a full list of the categories I am currently using is located here). The challenge that I find is that when one has too many categories in number, it becomes a nightmare to manage them all, and they lose their usefulness. But of course if the set of tags were closed or limited, it could hamper our ability to create new ideas.

Technorati Tags: language, philosophy, great books program, web/tech, delicious

Bill Gates: Last Comic Standing

Bill Gates, super genius, told a German newspaper that the iPod won't last. Reality check, Bill: MSFT has declined 25% in value, while AAPL has increased more than 40% over the last five years (the difference is even more striking in the 2-year and 1-year charts).

I guess investors like a company that actually delivers products (e.g., the iMac, the iPod, OS updates), rather than "Chief Software Architects" who travel around the world just to bad-mouth others. And glad to see your biatches in Redmond are bringing innovation to the computer world, Tiger!

Holy Week

It's almost the end of Lent: tomorrow at 4:30 p.m., we will enter into the most sacred three days of the year, the Triduum. I am most excited - these forty days have flown by, mainly because I failed to observe them properly. I didn't give anything up, I didn't commit myself to any practices meant to increase my charity. I am a bad Christian.

Now that that public confession is out of the way, it's time to focus on the good things that are happening. The academic year is winding down, though many students and staff are feeling the stress building. For myself, I am getting things done, acting ambitious, and generally feeling pretty good about life. We've certainly had some challenges, and pain, but I am pretty satisfied with the way things are shaking out and the lessons that are being learned.

This summer is looking to be busy. My brothers in the 1999 Novice Class for the Western Dominican Province are going to make their final vows at the end of May, so I hope to travel to the Bay Area to join them for this momentous occasion. It will be an event both joyful and sad for me; happy for them, sad for the fact that it didn't work out for my own vocation. If I weren't so happy with the way that it has worked out for me, I might be overcome by the occasion. But the Church and the Province are stronger for these men: Jerome, Vincent Mary, Michael Joseph, John Thomas, and Anthony.

I head off to Mass in the Blessed Andre Besette Chapel now, but I wanted to give a link to a project that I've recently restarted: the LeisureWiki, a form of "external brain" that I use to keep track of notes and ideas. Check it out.

iPod-based Comedy: Live from London!

You really shouldn't miss the story about how London Tube stations are being overrun by folks creating impromptu-iPod dance parties (thanks for the tip from As the Apple Turns). Folks hear about a gathering, and show up from all over the city at a station, where they dance to whatever their iPod (or other, less hip, portable music device) is pumping into the headphones, much to the confusion of passers-by, who hear nothing.

Does this phenomenon provide an insight into how we shut out others and live in a soundproof cocoon in the midst of crowds? That's what I sometimes think about as I walk across campus with my headphones in and Supersuckers blasting their cover of "Hey Ya!", while making eye contact and nodding to folks I'd otherwise be engaging in conversation.

Another Reason to Switch

MacDailyNews reports that the air traffic control system of Southern California, which is based on Windows servers, experienced a system error that left 800 airplanes in the air with no way to communicate with the FAA on the ground.

Way to go, fellas!

http://www.apple.com/switch/

Inadvertant Comedy on the Vatican Site

While looking up references for my last post, I noticed a strange juxtaposition on the Vatican's English-Language homepage: There was a button link that read: "Catechism Bible Code" (see below for the button). Of course, I made the connection in my mind to the wacko "Bible Code" books, and couldn't fathom why the Vatican would be promoting such chunder (read this for a Catholic response to "Bible Code" gibberish).

A click alleviated my concern: the button links to the homepage for official Catholic translations of The Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Holy Bible, and the Code of Canon Law.

Whew.

Back To My Roots

I like gadgets. I am known somewhat as a gadget king around my social circles, because I've always got something new to show off and use. But recently, I've embraced a gadget from the past that still elicits oohs and ahhs every time I use it: the eMate 300, which was one of the last Newton machines that Apple made.

The eMate is a glorious combination of PDA and really useful laptop computer. It uses a pen stylus, reads my own handwriting, runs on rechargable batteries that last for a week at a charge, and is very durable. It's smaller than a subnotebook, weighs less than most, and has a bright, clear screen with a green backlight.

Apple's Newton Just Won't Drop is a Wired magazine article about the glory of the Newton, and how, even 6 years after the product was killed, the Newton user community is stronger than ever.

I picked up my eMate on eBay for $65 shipped, and then got a second one at the same price as a backup - it's the same philosophy behind buying two '72 Dodge Darts, so that you can cannibalize parts from the one to make the other run.

Keep the Green!

Server Changes/Downtime

I've cancelled my manofleisure.us account on GoDaddy.com. They really chapped my hide by not supporting the Macintosh, and I'm simply not going to pay for something that I can't fully use.

When I first signed up with GoDaddy, everything looked very easy and the server worked fine on my Mac. But when I was trying to perform some maintenance to make the new TypePad site as my homepage, a series of unexplained security problems cropped up. A voicecall to their support center was particularly disappointing:

"I'm having problems all of a sudden with your DNS Total Control service."

"Uhh, are you using IE 6.0?"

"No, I'm on Safari, like I always am."

"Oh, we don't support Macintosh."

"Really? How come I was able to sign up for the account on this exact same computer and browser just six months ago? Where would I have seen the 'Macs not supported' warning? I mean, it wouild've made quite a difference to me when I was looking around to choose my webspace provider!"

So, today I cancelled my GoDaddy account. As a result, for a few days, manofleisure.us will not come up. But never fear, the data still exists on this TypePad site. When the DNS system is ready, I shall have it repointed to the new site, [fingers crossed] and all of the links will work fine.[/fingers crossed]

One change is that the Wiki will no longer be available to the public. Since I really like the idea of the Wiki, I've relocated it to my own computer, where it runs as my own notepad/thinking space. I've been using it quite a bit to take notes for my Master's project. But I am sitting behind a firewall that prevents you from accessing the machine if you're not on the UP campus. Sorry for the loss, but never fear, I am still using the Wiki technology for good (not evil)!