Month: February 2003

Ok…back. Finally. Feels like I’ve been gone a month. It’s the combination of lack of connectivity and being in the hills of KY….talk about a different kind of place. Going from Chapel Hill (bastion of the liberal) to the bible belt/religious right/gun toting/backwoods that is my home is a real eye-opener. I got a reminder of where I was when my grandmother asked me “Are there many colored’s in NC?” After deciphering that she was asking me if there was a high concentration of African Americans (or other non-caucasion people, I suppose)…and after I understood it, I still didn’t quite know how to answer. I’d like to believe that she was out of it…doped on various meds, but I can’t be sure.

Welcome to small town KY.

Okay…still in KY. Granny is doing really well. Turns out that it definitely wasn’t a heart attack…and no damage was done. All in all, a great outcome. Still worried a bit about her.

Coming home to NC tomorrow…looking forward to getting home.

More later, when I have real internet access.

Well…a different sort of day today. Spent all day yesterday driving to KY to check on my grandmother’s health. Luckily, she is doing better…just released from the hospital, and seems ok. Turns out to be stress related, and we’re trying to make sure and eliminate all of that that we can.

Today Jack Valenti gave a public presentation titled “Comments on the Moral Imperative” at Duke University Law School. It was the typical Valenti patter that has been reported before (overused cliches and dogmatic approaches to intellectual property), but two things came up that I hadn’t seen reported before. One was that, at least for this lecture, he framed the problem facing the MPAA with digital duplication as a moral problem and not a legal one. Clearly it’s illegal…he seemed very confused why people seem to think that it’s not immoral as well. The second issue, closely related, is that he made no distinction at all between content and media, simply unwilling to admit that there is a difference between the two and conflating them to his advantage. So: the main question is “Has the MPAA ever made a distinction between content and media in the past to their advantage, and is that useful in the current environment?” The secondary question is “Is this really a moral failing of some sort in the youth of today?” Webcast of the speech will be available in a few days or so at: http://www.law.duke.edu/webcast/

Meanwhile, back in the real world…

I’ve been spending some time brushing up on RSS and RDF and other things that I don’t really understand. First impressions: cool as fucking hell. I’m running Amphetadesk .93 right now as an RDF aggregator, and it’s like seeing pictures on the WWW for the first time (when my buddy and I managed to cobble together a connection on our campus network that would support Mosaic). Really is a completely different sort of interaction with information. More reflections on this as I understand it better.

Well, we’re still searching for clues about what happened with my grandmother. She may not have actually had a heart attack…the EKG’s and enzyme tests don’t support that. If she did, she had a very, very mild one. So that’s good. What’s bad is that if that’s NOT what it is, then the doctors aren’t sure what it could be.

But it’s better…she’s recovering. I’m not driving to KY to see her just yet. It appears that she will recover (given the way things are going now).

I just got off the phone with my sister.

My grandmother just had a heart attack. She’s 74.

She’s recovering, and it doesn’t appear that she’s in danger right now.

I’m not sure how to feel yet. Relieved that it’s not worse, or scared to death that it happened.

Realized that this blog is becoming very random. I suppose that’s a good thing, since I’m kind of doing this for myself moreso than other people.

So, in the grand Blog tradition: a list of favorites….

Right now, I’m listening to probably my favorite band: Counting Crows. Got hooked on them with August and Everything After, and just love their use of language, Adam’s voice, and the layers that the now HUGE band create musically (they’ve got like 7 members currently…3 guitars, drummer, bass, Charlie, who plays everything from accordian to keyboards…and of course, Adam on vocals, ocassionally harmonica and piano).

So I’m listening to them, and trying to make sense out of RSS and XML feeds. It’s not often that I run across a tech acronym that I don’t know, but RSS was one of them. I’m fixing that now, hopefully.

Blog MeetUp last night…very, very interesting stuff. Discussion about the reason for the blog explosion, the interesting social implications, the voyeuristic side of reading blogs (as well as the exhibitionist side of writing in one). Lots of interesting stuff.

In other thoughts…trying to plan for the summer. Lots of travel options, just have to work the finances out.

Currently awaiting the Blog meeting at Strong’s coffee in downtown Chapel Hill. Should be interesting, and will report later (maybe during!).