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Christmas Playlist 2014
I’ve been very carefully building a Christmas playlist for over a decade. I only add one song a year, and I only listen to the songs on the list between Thanksgiving and the Epiphany. There are now fourteen songs on the list.
- “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley
- “The Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues
- “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Judy Garland
- “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” by Dean Martin
- “Christmas Time is Here (Instrumental)” by Vince Guaraldi Trio
- “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” by John Lennon
- “Father Christmas” by The Kinks
- “The Christmas Song” by Nat “King” Cole
- “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby
- “Baby It’s Cold Outside” by Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Jordan
- “Here Comes Santa Claus” by Elvis Presely
- “What Christmas Means to Me” by Stevie Wonder
- “Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy” by David Bowie & Bing Crosby
- “Merry Xmas Everybody” by Slade
New this year is the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s classic “Christmas Time is Here (Instrumental)”. I’ve also resequenced the list with an ear for the flow of the songs. It starts, as always, with “Hallelujah” and “The Fairytale of New York,” then jumps back in time and tone to Judy Garland, working a bit more modern each song until “Father Christmas.” If this were a record, that would be the end of side A. Side B starts back with a classic tune, again getting a bit more modern with each tune until Slade ends things.
When I started the list I think my goal was to pick off-kilter songs but over time I’ve realized that Christmas songs have to be mostly done in earnest to really work. I have tons of less conventional Christmas songs in my iTunes library but I think the list has to be grounded by the classics to work. Thus this year’s addition of “Christmas Time is Here,” which adds some classic warmth to be offset by the Kinks two songs later.
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Multiversity: Pax Americana by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, and Nathan Fairbairn is one of the finest comics I’ve read all year, and I just read The Incal. Here are a few articles about it that I’ve liked. I’ll update the list as I come across more links.
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Re: Defining a microblog post
[A] microblog post has these qualities:
Must have an RSS feed. Does not have an RSS item title. Contains short post text, 280 characters or less.
My upcoming weblog system has the ability to post microblog posts. I will probably stick with the Twitter standard 140 characters. I’ve found it to be a good limit that challenges me to either boil an idea down to one thought or properly elaborate it with arguments in a full blog post. But the particular limit is I think less important than the idea that there is indeed a difference between a short post and a longer one. Titled/untitled is more of a distinction, software-wise, since I need to craft the RSS feed differently. Apps that read and present RSS need to do more thinking about why the two types of posts might be handled differently.
I think it might be important to think not just about what makes a microblog post micro, but how those types of posts differ from full posts.
A microblog post:
- Contains a single thought, a link with short commentary, or a photo with a caption.
- Is less appropriate for multiple links or photos.
- Is intended to be read quickly in a timeline with lots of other similarly-sized posts.
- Is short enough to be read without scrolling.
A full-length post:
- May contain a thesis and arguments in support of that central idea.
- May contain several links or photos.
- May be long enough that it can’t be presented in the same way as microblog posts, because it needs to be scrolled to be read.
Twitter of course rose in popularly in very large part because it left itself pretty loose in how it should be used, so my ideas of what makes a tweet a tweet surely vary from others’. And of course the blog post has changed as comments have fallen out of favor.
A question for further consideration: aside from leaving off titles, should I be treating microblog posts any differently on their way out the door? Is there metadata or markup a short post should maybe have that a longer one shouldn’t? Should a site have discrete feeds for micro posts in addition to, or instead of, interleaved feeds that also include longer posts?
Twitter: ↩️Reply, 🔄Retweet, ⭐️Favorite
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Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You My Lad
In this week’s “Ten Thoughts About Doctor Who”, Rich Johnston has this neat tidbit:
Has anyone ever read M. R. James’ Oh, Whistle, And I’ll Come To Ye, My Lad? Named after the Burns poem, wherein an elderly professor is terrorised by a creature always just out of the line of sight – or, at one point, hiding under a bedspread. This is where the ghost in the bedsheets trope comes directly from, and this episode seems to go They even adapted it for the screen a couple of times as Whistle And I’ll Come To You.
Oh look who was in it most recently. [Picture of John Hurt]
Always a sucker for poems that inspire books, I’ll of course have to check this out. Here’s the text on Wikisource.. It appears in the collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, available for free on Kindle and iBooks.
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Second Act Character Changes in Comics
Marvel Comics recently announced that a female character will become Thor in an upcoming storyline, and that African-American Sam Wilson will take over as Captain America. Both stories got a bit of mainstream press, prompting an interesting discussion on The Incomparable podcast about the recasting of comic book characters. Something that didn’t get mentioned during the discussion, and something Marvel doesn’t say in its press events, is that while these might be good jumping-on points for the books, both of these developments are actually parts of larger stories the writers have been telling for several years.
A few numbers:
- The new Thor story, featuring an as-yet-unidentified female taking over the role of Thor, will be Jason Aaron’s 31st (or so) issue writing about Asgardian heroes (25ish issues of Thor: God of Thunder and five of Original Sin tie-in “The Tenth Realm” featuring Thor and Loki).
- The new Captain America story, in which Sam Wilson becomes Cap after Steve Rogers loses his powers, will be something like Rick Remender’s 25th issue of Captain America volume seven.
Naturally “Thor is a Woman Now!” is a more enticing headline than “Read Part 31 of Jason Aaron’s Ongoing Thor Epic!”
Going back a bit:
- Batman (seemingly) died in the 43rd issue of Grant Morrison’s 91-issue run (counting crossovers and mini-series).
- Steve Rogers (seemingly) died in the 27th issue of Ed Brubaker’s 134-issue Captain America run. (Counting the Brubaker-written Winter Soldier series.)
- Johnny Storm died in the 25th issue of Jonathan Hickman’s 61-issue run of Fantastic Four (Counting Dark Reign: Fantastic Four and FF.)
- Peter Parker’s mind was inside Doctor Octopus’s body when it died 58 issues into Dan Slott’s run as full-time writer of Amazing Spider-Man, and he’d written 28 issues before that in the “Brand New Day” era. His run is still going with over 120 issues and counting.
I keep writing and re-writing this post but can’t figure out why this point is important to me. Is it that:
- Comics companies should promote stories based on their creative quality, not convenient story developments?
- People should have been reading good books all along and not be encouraged to jump in when there’s a big attention-grabbing headline, which incentivizes companies to force big attention-grabing headline type stuff into their stories?
- Some sort of implication that you’re a poser if you only like Cap when a black guy carries the shield, even though it’s written by the same guy whose book you’d been not buying for two years?
- A personal fastidiousness that forces me to secure a creator’s complete run on a book and makes me unable to just jump in with part 31?
- A realization that as a white male who can identify with almost any character on the stands, the matter of whether I can identify with a given character is thus much less important to me as a criterion with which to evaluate my interest in a book?
Probably some parts of all of the above. I certainly have jumped onto books because of big events, usually then realizing, “oh, that’s why everyone’s been talking about this book for years!” I’ve also gotten to be a more discerning reader who knows his own tastes, so I’m more often in on the ground floor than I used to be.
Oh, do go read David Brothers’s fantastic piece about these two Marvel announcements and “diversity marketing.”
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The Term eSports Bothers Me in a Pedantic Way
Related to this tweet by Ben Kuchera, I sort of have to object to the term “eSports” to mean competitive video game playing. Arguments about definitions are usually boring (see also: what is art?), but to me, a “sport” must require an athletic component. Further, I worry that the use of the term invites this exact sort of dismissal and thus undermines the concept of competitive gaming.
I don’t at all want to put down the concept of competitive gaming (especially because I’m terrible as first-person shooters and never dedicated enough time to get past basic Zerg rushes in StarCraft). Gaming does require coordination and endurance, but it’s not an athletic endeavor, just like playing the trombone isn’t. Playing an instrument requires an intense amount of mind-body cohesion. It requires you to tie your breathing to the piece you’re playing, to tune your emotions to what your fingers are doing, for wind instruments, to be aware of spit production, and so on. But you don’t call a musical performance an athletic event (dance, marching, etc. obviously excluded). I make the connection because while you wouldn’t call playing in an orchestra a sport, you’re not diminishing music, you’re just applying a definition. Whatever competitive gaming is, it’s not a sport, but that’s not a knock against it.
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Unspoilt
Via Shane Liesegang, I came to this piece about spoilers by Todd VanDerWerff. I am sure that writing about art is annoying in the anti-spoiler era. I agree that that cries about spoilers probably does hamper critical writing. VanDerWerff uses as an example Kyle Buchanan’s article about Godzilla, which discusses the plot of the film in detail without raising its commenters’ hackles. Yet Buchanan’s piece has a spoiler warning right at the top. I’d say it follows anti-spoiler best practices. Anyway, for the record, here’s my take on spoilers.
There are, rarely, moments of genuine delight to be found when a story surprises you. I saw The Sixth Sense in the theater and honestly hadn’t guessed the ending. Doctor Who’s David Tennant years had a few great reveals. I’m talking about those moments where you don’t see something coming and this literal spine-tingling sensation washes over you and you think, “well done. Well done.” I wouldn’t ever want to rob anyone of that moment. This is what a spoiler does. Anti-spoiler advocates will argue, rightly, that what’s important is how a story is told, and that the plot is only a vehicle for that. Sure. But you can get all of that by watching a movie/reading a book a second time. The first time through is when you get to just enjoy the storytelling and let whatever twists and turns the author might have for you affect you as they will.
When I talk about the subject of spoilers, someone will often bring up that study that spoilers actually enhance one’s enjoyment. While I can’t debunk that study, I think it’s beside the point. What it basically says is that knowing what happens in a story lets you pay more attention to how the story is being told, see foreshadowing, examine the craft, etc, and that people provide a higher hedonistic ranking to that sort of viewing than when going in fresh. But you can get the spoilt viewing experience by simply rewatching the movie. You can only get the unspoilt experience once.
(I realize as I reread this piece before publishing that the following paragraph amounts to an attack on those in the anti-spoiler camp. I’ll let its points stand but I don’t want to accuse all anti-spoiler advocates of being lazy viewers.)
I think part of the anti-spoiler point of view is a result of people not taking the time to really enjoy movies, and that there aren’t all that many truly masterful pieces of craft out there. With home viewing increasingly replacing theater-going, I think fewer and fewer people sit down and watch a movie without having an iPad on in the foreground. It’s difficult to get spine-tingling enjoyment from a good plot twist if you haven’t devoted yourself to just watching the movie, and impossible if the movie wasn’t worthy of your attention in the first place. But for those rare moments when the really big reveal grabs you at just the right place… I’m sorry if you don’t get to experience that. Next time, pick a better movie that’s worthy of an unspoilt first viewing, then watch it again.
As for critics? Just deal with having to include a brief spoiler warning and ignore people who disregarded the warning and went ahead and read the article. Besides, you shouldn’t be reading comments, anyway.
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Passwordless and Accountless Computing
As I’ve dealt with changing several dozen passwords over the past week, I’ve been thinking about how the username/password and account paradigm could be improved. I’m in no way whatsoever a security expert, so maybe these things are already in the works or, even more likely, maybe there are reasons why they wouldn’t work, but here’s what I’ve come up with.
Most of us carry phones with us everywhere we go. We also use the same one or two computers every day, and maybe an iPad or something, too. We’ll just call them all “computing devices” for simplicity. So, instead of creating an account for every service you use and having a username/password for each one, what if your computing device managed your identity for you? Here’s the workflow:
- I unlock my computing device with a password and maybe a fingerprint (or DNA scan or facial recognition or whatever factor we have in the future).
That’s it. I go to some webpages and use them normally, but I never have to log in. My computing device has a certificate that identifies me to the service. (And there’s an easy way to go anonymous or have multiple identities as desired.)
My computing device knows basic information about me that I’ve set up ahead of time: my name, mailing address, payment info, etc. A service never needs to store these things. It just asks my device for them when needed, and I can revoke a service’s access to particular information on my own system whenever desired in a similar manner to how I can grant or deny an application access to my contacts or photos in iOS now.
This system of course wouldn’t work if I let someone else use my computer, since they’d be browsing around as me, so I’d have to create an account for each member of the household (which my Mac has, though iOS devices are single-user). Soon enough I hope it’s possible I could log onto someone else’s computer using my own credentials and have all my data just show up from whatever cloud services I use.
Ideally we’d also have legislation in place that dictates what companies are permitted to do with customer’s personal information in the same way that HIPAA and FERPA protect patients’ and students’ data. My larger view is that users would be dictating where their information is stored, and this identity would be managed client-side rather than stored in an account at Amazon, and at Google, and at every other site I visit.
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