Collected Thoughts 5-26-09

• Jay Bennett died. I hate disingenuous eulogies. The truth is that while I like Wilco -- hey, I even think "Yeah! Wilco is great!" -- I never got into Wilco. That is to say, if I made a 20 song soundtrack of my life, there wouldn't be any Wilco on it. So, um, that sucks that he died?

• Buzzbands has the scoop on "Also I Like to Rock". I will be there July 23rd for Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros (since I never made it to their three show residency this month) and, more importantly, Eskimohunter. (!!!)

• Biking LA.

• Photo nerdity.

• Say goodbye to your free time.
  

• Google knows who is most likely to leave the company. The Singularity is near!

• Morbius in Spider-Man 4? I would love that.
  

• On my flight back from Indianapolis last night I began reading really interesting book called Legacy of Ashes that details the historical ineptitude of the CIA. But soon it became dark, the cabin lights dimmed, and the two people sitting next to me began to doze off. My middle-seat "reading light" illuminated the entire row and might disturb my neighbors' sleep. It seemed rude to read the book.
  
  Ah! But I had books on my iPhone and the backlit screen's soft light barely illuminated my own face. The digital form was both more convenient and more considerate. My hardcover book was heavy, consumed space, and was made of precious trees; my iPhone was light and consumed the same resources (material and battery power) regardless of how many books it contained. The digital form was certainly more efficient.

• Another common argument for the pro-print lobby is that quality writing and "serious" reporting is only possible in the print industry. This is silly.
  
  For one, "serious" reporting by blogs becomes more common all the time. If newspapers should fall there will be a demand for that sort of reporting, there will be philanthropic investors, and there will be a market reaction that will provide that sort of reporting in a digital medium. It's not happening now because it doesn't have to yet. Transition period, etc.
  
  I also would suggest that few of our most treasured pieces of writing and literature were profitable when they were written. How much money did the founding fathers make off of the federalist papers, some of the finest political philosophy ever written? Were Edgar Allen Poe's poems widely distributed at the time of his death? I would wager that more than half of our greatest writings were written with passion put before profit.
  
  Without the publisher-newspaper industrial complex it will be harder for writers to make their careers writing. This is not too awful. Some great writers may not have the will to work a different job and write, but those who do will likely be our very best, our most sincere and driven writers.
  
  At the end of the day, communication is a function of the species. People will write. Once the digital medium is wholly ubiquitous it will give more people a more equal shot at having their ideas change the world. The most committed, the most driven, those who believe the most that they have something worth saying, will be the ones whose ideas break through regardless of the economic structure that surrounds written communication. And those will be the people to whom we should pay notice. What's an idea if it only flies when it's paid for?
  

• Here's an interesting read on gender stereotypes and workplace politics. The moneyquote:
  
  "Men have worked as essentially shop keepers and store clerks for a lot longer than they have worked on assembly lines. There have been waiters forever. Lawyers are the world's second oldest profession. Teaching was a male-only profession for centuries. The idea that men are and ought to be unreflective, grunting, two-fisted louts good with their hands but not so much with their hearts and their heads is a class thing not a gender thing and it is imposed upon working class men by a system that needs them to be beasts of burden.

  Men who reject certain values and behaviors as "sissy" or "girlie" are rejecting success, and don't think their bosses aren't grateful."

• Regarding the Prop 8 ruling: A lot of folks don't seem to grasp the legal nuances of the ruling. This same state supreme court is the only high court in the land to elevate sexual orientation to the same level as gender and race in regards to discrimination cases. This same supreme court said that Prop 22 was anti-constitutional, allowing for gay marriage in the first place. This same supreme court said that the existing thousands of gay marriages are to be upheld. The California Supreme Court is not discriminatory on the basis of sexual orientation.
  
  How can they uphold Prop 8 then? Because it isn't the court's job to overturn amendments to state constitutions made by citizens. It'd be nice and easy if they would, but that's not the supreme court's mandate. What they've really done is say that the people of the state of California have a right to define "marriage" as they see fit. This is entirely different from saying the people of the state of California have a right to deny same-sex couples equal rights.
  
  The court essentially said this: "A revision to the state constitution would have required the legislature. This was merely an amendment. In other words, this has so little legal effect on the literal rights of those couples that the legislature wasn't needed." The California Supreme Court effectively ruled that Prop 8 is very, very weak code and that any attempt to use it to deny rights to same-sex couples, beyond the terminology "marriage," won't hold legal water. That's a huge upside for same-sex couples.
  
  I think any law that makes "separate but equal" unions for couples is bigotry. I voted against Prop 8 and was heartbroken when it passed. But I also think the California Supreme Court made a legally and constitutionally sound ruling. It's up to us, the people, to make our state fair. And we'll get a chance in the next year or two. In the long run, democratically-granted same sex marriage is stronger and less divisive than court-ordered anyway.