August 2012
1 post
4 tags
Feeding minds, or: What's a Soup Hub?
Clearly I’m old enough to remember a time without it, but for a good decade and a half now I’ve been taking the internet for granted. Sure, I may have quit Twitter, but leaving the internet altogether is something I can’t really imagine. Too much of my life depends on it: the net is how I communicate with friends and family overseas, where I get my news, how I pay my bills....
July 2012
20 posts
June 2012
4 posts
Qwitter
Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses. -Boethius (paraphrased), ca. 524 A.D.
It would have made a good tweet:
Life’s to short for Twitter.
It’s pithy, it’s short enough for easy re-tweeting, and, best of all in the mirror-world of Twitter, it would be oh so ironic to post this, well, on Twitter.
But my (strangely still growing) list of followers won’t see this kind...
October 2011
1 post
1 tag
“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period...”
– “Copyright warning” included in in Woody Guthrie’s recordings from the early 1940s (source)
August 2011
1 post
4 tags
From home with love
Homeward bound I wish I was.
-Simon and Garfunkel, 1965
When I decided to start a blog in January of 2004, coming up with the right name was very important. I knew that whatever I chose was going to be my identity on the web from now on, so it needed to reflect who I was and what I was on about. The name “heimatseeker” emerged from my pursuit of and desire for a place where I could...
July 2011
3 posts
2 tags
If you sell it, they will buy
There is much to love about the story of the fake Apple store:
For one, the sheer boldness with which these people simply went and recreated an entire Apple store. The level of detail they went to in order to replicate an almost perfect experience. The fact that they managed to not only make the customers, but the employees themselves believe it was the real thing. They even referred their...
2 tags
What happens at Nethui gets posted on the internet
Last month, I attended Internet New Zealand’s inaugural Nethui conference.
The purpose of Nethui was to gather Kiwis involved with the internet, and to “shape our future together” by looking at opportunities and challenges for the internet here in New Zealand. Very broad! 500 people came, and the sessions approached the topic from a number of different angles, from culture to...
2 tags
Plagiarism wrongs and copy rights
Good morning. How are you? I’m Dr. Worm. I’m interested in things. I’m not a real doctor, but I am a real worm
-They Might Be Giants, Doctor Worm
Academic titles are big deal in Germany. Unfortunately, it appears that not everyone who holds one also deserves it. Over the past 6 months or so, a number of politicians and other prominent figures had their doctorates revoked by...
June 2011
1 post
1 tag
May 2011
1 post
1 tag
“Knowledge would advance more quickly if new findings were discussed openly and...”
– Edward Dolnick, The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World (2011), page 67
About Robert Boyle and the Royal Society’s new approach to openly discussing and publishing knowledge, rather than keeping it secret as had been the practice.
April 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Open source democracy (Part 3)
Wondering about how to improve democratic participation seems a rather silly and pointless exercise when your own elected representatives show open contempt for the system and the people that got them into power in the first place. When I lived in the US, I used to get upset when all kinds of legislation would get bundled together with “money for the troops” - something no lawmaker would dare...
1 tag
“Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is...”
– The Preacher, in Synecdoche, New York, 2008
March 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Open source democracy (Part 2)
“Can we create an open source democracy?”
That was the question with which I concluded the previous post. Following events around the world in the two weeks since then, I can’t help but wonder if this is even the right question. Do we, as a species, not have bigger issues to address first? How relevant is the particular form of democracy when the worlds seems to come crashing down all around us?
...
1 tag
Open source democracy (Part 1)
This post is the first of a series on a topic that has been floating around in my mind for a while, trying to take shape. I’ve tried to approach it from a number of different angles and raised it with quite a few people, including some of the incredibly smart crowd at Kiwifoo 2011. While there is still a good deal of amorphousness, patterns are slowly emerging and dots are starting to connect....
February 2011
2 posts
1 tag
“I’ve already spent too much time
Doing things I didn’t want to
So...”
– Amanda Palmer, Do You Swear To Tell The Truth The Whole Truth And Nothing But The Truth So Help Your Black Ass, 2010 Download this song from Bandcamp
1 tag
Unique, just like everybody else
Our poetry now is the realisation that we possess nothing anything therefore is a delight (since we do not possess it) and thus need not fear its loss We need not destroy the past; it is gone at any moment, it might reappear and seem to be and be the present Would it be a repetition? Only if we thought we owned it, but since we don’t, it is free and so are we.
John Cage, Lecture on Nothing,...
January 2011
7 posts
1 tag
“Woanders ist auch scheisse.*”
– Frank Goosen, Radio Heimat, 2010 *Elsewhere is crap, too.
1 tag
“You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?”
– Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime, 1981
1 tag
“I sit by the roadside.
The driver is changing the wheel.
I don’t like...”
– Bertolt Brecht, Buckower Elegien, 1953 Original German text
1 tag
Not long ago
Originally posted on heimatseeker.com, February 27, 2004, 06:02 PM PST
I had completely forgotten about this story I wrote a lifetime ago, at the beginning of the year which would eventually see us move to New Zealand. Finding it via archive.org and re-reading it made me smile. Yes, the political stuff is dated and, in hindsight, naive. But the sentiment still rings true.
Not long ago, I ran...
2 tags
Why I made up a word, what it means, and other...
Originally posted on heimatseeker.com, January 24, 2004, 04:21 PM PST
The post that started it all. Seven years after writing it, it’s still relevant to me, in fact, it’s so relevant that it I’m resurrecting this blog, which has laid dormant for well over half a decade.
Since I discovered it as a young teen, Bertolt Brecht’s poem “Radwechsel” has always...
1 tag
“As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So...”
– Hermann Hesse, Stufen, 1941 Original German text
2 tags
My Seven Year Itch
Originally posted on heimatseeker.com, January 07, 2004, 09:09 PM PST
The anniversary of my emigration has always been an important date for me. A few weeks ago, I hit 14 years. The article below was written at the 7-year mark, and it expresses my love for San Francisco. Only 9 months later, we left San Francisco to move to the other side of the planet. If anything, this is a reminder to...
