Charles Pillsbury III

Sheesh that’s bad even for me. Especially since we’ve had birthdays (and cakes to go with them).

And a violin recital

And some other stuff… but I’ll get into that later.

The following was my long-winded response to a member on Wordtrip regarding his dismissal of the Kindle because a retailer pushing their proprietary format “never works” in his opinion, and that he thought the device that will really be the tipping point for ebooks will be an “iPod” that plays anything.

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The iPod was A big gun in the portable music market, but it was when they introduced the iTunes music store selling their proprietary audio format that locked people into using the iPod to keep using their newly purchased collection, that it became THE big gun in the portable music market (even though it was way more expensive than the competition).

The iPod always played mp3s, just like the Kindle will display PDF and HTML and DOC formats, but it was the easy digital delivery and purchasing of proprietary AAC, which gave the producers happy feelings about their stuff not being stolen, that made the legal on-line music market (and they’ve sold a few billion songs that way before going DRM free). Now you’ve got a lot of DRM free versions of music (amazon’s mp3 store for example) because the producers didn’t like to be locked into Apple, and what I suspect will happen is something similar when the Kindle has shown enough publishers that people will pay for digital content the producers will then start unlocking it for other eBook readers.

The Phone idea isn’t unlikely per se, and the Kindle app for iPhone is a step in that direction (they’re apparently going to be making for other devices as well), though I think the BIG dig against a blackberry/phone concept is that having read a few things on the iPhone and Blackbery, it’s just not as comfortable to try and read any quantity of content on a small screen. For me I think the more likely scenario would be something in the Netbook realm which cost about the same (or less) than an iPhone/smartphone, are about the size of a large hardback, and have a large subset of the computer functions. Acer (or Asus) has demoed that dual-touch-screen netbook that could be used as normal netbook, or held open like a book and read. They’re already working built-in wi-fi and cell in the netbooks, so if they tweak that technology a bit to allow for longer battery life it could be a Kindle killer (even though with a browser and mp3 player built in already the Kindle is going to make other people work for it).

The thing to notice on Amazon though is that, unlike Apple who keeps a stranglehold on “their market”, Amazon has shown incredible willingness to market their competitors. If you go to Amazon and search for a product, they show the used and new people selling items cheaper than they do AND if it’s a non-book product they usually default a sale to the cheapest people selling it even if they sell it as well. I’m not sure how they’d monetize that in a digital content market, but I’m not sure they couldn’t come up with a way. Bezos tries to be very customer-centric in the company’s decisions.

Secondarily an eBook reader will almost by design be a one-off market catering to a higher-end customer UNLESS the book industry figures out a way to drop prices on digital books to be consistently at the paperback (sub $Cool price range. Most people I know who are book lovers don’t go buy every hardback they own at retail price. Most are used book store people who pick up a ton of their collection at sub $3 per book pricing. The main market for the eBook is going to be the business traveler who would otherwise be buying a book in the airport.

Yes, I realize it has been over a month since my last post. I had worked on a few posts that haven’t made it out, but largely been taking a break to do some more reading. Then, when I decided I wanted to post a couple things in the last few days, I’ve discovered that Ecto has developed an issue on my iBook and hangs whenever I try and save or publish a blog post.

So, in short, while I try and fix my issues (and upgrade to the latest Wordpress).

A) Go buy Jamie Ford’s new book “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet”, it’s great, and you want to get the first edition before it hits the NYT lists (something I’m confident it should do, even if it’s “only” been in the top 100 on bn.com and near it on amazon so far… it’s going to make that leap).

B) Go buy/read Neil Gaiman’s newly Newburried “The Graveyard Book”

C) Go watch the Digital 3D version of “Coraline” which was absolutely beautiful and brilliant.

*** Update

I killed my install of Ecto and re-installed and it seems to have worked. Also upgraded the blog to 2.7.1 finally. Now just trying to get new install of Ecto and Wordpress to talk nicely and get me a copy of all my old posts local.

This sort of thought experiment is likely only useful to philosophers, researchers, and novelists… but as somebody who fancies himself aspirational to at least two of those titles I think I almost have to comment.

To be truly evil, someone must have sought to do harm by planning to commit some morally wrong action with no prompting from others (whether this person successfully executes his or her plan is beside the point). The evil person must have tried to carry out this plan with the hope of “causing considerable harm to others,” Bringsjord says. Finally, “and most importantly,” he adds, if this evil person were willing to analyze his or her reasons for wanting to commit this morally wrong action, these reasons would either prove to be incoherent, or they would reveal that the evil person knew he or she was doing something wrong and regarded the harm caused as a good thing.

[From Are You Evil? Profiling That Which Is Truly Wicked: Scientific American]

In Fiction:

One of the truisms in fiction writing I find most interesting, is that your villains shouldn’t think of themselves as villains. Very rarely do people, no matter how “objectively evil” they seem, really think of themselves as “the bad guy” in a story. This is often culled down to “we’re all the heroes of our own tales” or something of the sort.   Part of the way around this (particularly in fiction) is that so few people are willing to analyze their own reasons for doing anything beyond some basic set of political or religious ethics that one can almost ignore this and just paint them as the mustachioed maniacal bad guy.

As a parent I watch a lot of kids movies and read a fair number of kid’s books and it’s particularly noticeable to me when somebody doesn’t fall for this easy out. The one that jumped out at me when I started to think about this was Disney’s Meet the Robinsons of a few years ago. The bad guy has a handle-bar mustache, evil laugh, bad teeth, BO, and wears a bowler hat, as almost stereotypical as they could make him, but then they give him motivation and a reason, and show how he got there (and give him a path back). The Incredibles has Syndrome who is given a real motivation and character development. Princess Mononoke (not exactly a “kids” movie) has several characters that might be described as “bad” along the way, but they all have motivations that aren’t entirely unreasonable. In literature one of my favorite books is Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card and he goes so far as to make the (apparent) antagonists (the “Buggers”) through most of the book become something akin to a secondary protagonist by the end (or at least by the third and fourth books in the series) and does a wonderful job of showing the “humanity” in both the “good” guys and the “bad” guys.

In Philosophy:

In the realm of philosophy it is easy for us to villainize “the other guy” for their ridiculous religious or political beliefs which are so obviously wrong to us that our opponent must be evil. I think the challenge for us, as reasoned members of civilization, is to recognize the flaws in our own thinking, as well as the flaws in others’ thinking, and attempt to create an exchange of this understanding. This should be much easier to do when we’re talking the difference between a republican and a democrat in the US, than it is between a liberal Christian (or atheist) in the affluent west who wants to “live and let live” and somebody from an impoverished nation where versions of Islam (and other religions) have fostered a hate for outsiders and those unwilling to convert (or even a hatred for those unwilling to hate those who won’t convert), but that doesn’t excuse us from trying.

Three Cups of Tea (which I think I’ve talked about before) is the true story of Greg Mortenson who is approaching this problem in, what I think is, a correct way; by working to educate young children (especially girls) in impoverished areas. By educating the poorest of the poor he’s helping give them a means of improving their life and therefor improving their overall view of life and the rest of the people living it. (I’m not saying violence is never justified as a means of stopping other violence, just that it’s not generally viable as the only “solution” to a problem).

I think the key to remember is that while we can easily say there are evil actions, it is much harder to identify a truly evil person… most of us (”us” being humanity) are trying to do “what is right” by the definitions we have formed, and have been given by the society around us.

I’ve had this sitting in my “to write” queue, and realized that I don’t actually need to write anything. I just hope that somebody succeeds in this space.

In a nutshell, there is a huge, inelastic demand for college texts, even though textbook prices are high. Because of this there is a lot of piracy and a robust secondary market for textbooks — but not for long, because they are updated every couple of years, rendering old editions virtually worthless.

Flat World’s business plan aims to exploit the inefficiencies: Its books are online and free. Instead of charging for content it aims to make money by wrapping content up in “convenient” downloadable and print wrappers and selling those, along with study aides and related items.

[From Open Source Textbooks Challenge a Paradigm | Epicenter from Wired.com]

Scott Adams (aka “the Dilbert guy”) has one of the most interesting and entertaining blogs out there. I’d like to think I’d be as witty and interesting were I to have the money to spend the time just “thinking” as he does… but that’s probably just me being generous with myself. One of his recent posts was all about the “failures” of capitalism and what we can expect in the future.

Things change. It’s the nature of the universe. Yesterday’s greatest ideas give way to ideas that are better, or better suited to the present, or at least different. Change is the only thing on which you can depend.

So what about capitalism?

I think capitalism had a good run, but it will soon be done. Socialism will be too expensive to maintain as the world economies slow, and communism won’t be making a comeback. The economies of the future will be something new.

Capitalism was conceived before the Internet, and before the gears of commerce became computerized. The system could absorb a lot of con artists because they didn’t have the ability to steal fast enough to cripple the system. As you know, that has changed. Crooks in expensive suits now have the ability to swindle trillions, collectively, thanks to the efficiency of the system. And idiots in expensive suits can do even more damage.

[From Scott Adams Blog: The End of Capitalism 12/16/2008]

I don’t know what capitalism’s second act will look like, but it probably involves preventing individuals from being as self-destructive as they would prefer.

[From Scott Adams Blog: Call it Phase II of Capitalism 12/17/2008]

I think two points could be made here (ok, probably more than two points COULD be made, but I’m only going to try and make two). A) Capitalism isn’t pure anymore anyway so this is a moot point, and B) It’s more likely to be a continuous evolution of the free market and capitalism based economic systems than some sort of economic revolution.

In this world we simply cannot deal with all good things. There are more good songs than we can ever listen too. There are more good movies than we can ever see in our lifetime, even if it was our full time vocation. There are more useful tools than we have time to master. There are more cool websites than we have attention to spare. Forget about all junk, all the mass produced hits, and all the critically acclaimed creations that mean nothing to you personally. Focus instead on just the things that would rock your boat. There are still too many of them! There are in fact, more great bands, and books, and gizmos aimed right at you, customized to your unique desires, than you can absorb.

[From Kevin Kelly -- The Technium]

There was a time (last summer) when I was attempting to apply the “Inbox Zero” principle to my RSS reader. The problem was that I was spending so much time trying to make sure I read everything that came down the pipe from all the sources, on all the subjects, that I wasn’t getting anything created of my own. I was also not reading enough things in depth to really appreciate them (that “tip culture” again). I know I’m only going to have so many more trips around the sun (I still hope for another 80, but it could be only 40, or 4, or 0.01), so I’m trying to apply that zen principle of “letting go” and trying not to mentally hold on to all the cool stuff that I’m missing out on.
This is surprisingly manifested as well in my lack of an education. I’m an autodidact, but don’t have a college degree. For many years I talked about how I wanted to go back to college, and for a time I even took a few classes, but in the last 3 years I’ve owned that: while I would like to have a degree, and would enjoy the education part of it, I can get an education in 5-10 years just as easily as I can now, but the thing I can’t ever do again is enjoy the time with my children. At some point there won’t be anybody dancing on my bed singing about how they want “lots and lots of Giirirrrl toys”, but in all likelihood there will still be books, and colleges, and teachers, and things to learn. I’m never going to get caught up with the knowledge of the world, but nobody else will ever even try to catch up with the knowledge of Grace, Sam, & Jake (besides my wife and the family, but that would weaken my point so Pththththth).

Samir has it right: the question of what you’d do if you had a million dollars is essentially the same as what you’d do with a million dollars. Sure, you could answer, “If I had a million dollars, I’d light myself on fire and jump out of a tree.” But the question strongly implies “What would you do that you couldn’t do right now if you had a million dollars.” And while rich people often do stupid things, stupidity itself is free.

[From johnaugust.com » One. Million. Dollars.]

One of my coworkers if fond of saying that if he won the lottery he wouldn’t be the guy who says “first I’m going to pay off my debt” because if he’s got lottery money in the bank he doesn’t “give a s#$% about my credit rating”. I’m however more in the camp of one of my friends at work who points out that even if it wasn’t a multi-million dollar payout, he’d quit his job because how much of an ass would he feel like if he could’ve spent X-many years doing what he wanted, but instead kept a job and got killed during commute. For me, a million dollars wouldn’t be enough to technically retire for the rest of my life, but if I had enough money to pay off my house and enough in the bank to still afford to feed the family for the next 10-15 years I think it would be foolish to trudge down to my job 5 days a week. This probably says something about me not being in the “right job”, but I just haven’t seen enough openings for “Smart Ass: with good pay and benefits” to risk the family’s health and well being on trying to create that market.

So… what would you do with a million dollars? and if not a million, how much would it take?

I feel like I should, after all the politics and creative theory stuff, have some equivalent to BoingBoing’s unicorn chaser. So, I’m going with this wish list item for me… Chocolate.

Askinosie Chocolate

Askinosie San Jose Del Tambo (Ecuador)Less is more. And I never would have guessed that such simplicity would be so complex.

Askinosie Chocolate makes Authentic Single Origin bars. They’re made with a very short list of ingredients: cocoa beans, sugar and cocoa butter (they make their own facility from the same origin beans).

There are no emulsifiers and not even any vanilla.

[From Askinosie Chocolate - Candy Blog]

Luckily Merlin is taking his time between posting on 43 Folders lately, or I fear my blog would turn into little more than “ooh, go look at what he said now!” Still… Go look at what he said now!

While the largest part of his latest piece is an indictment of the “tip culture” (see: most of the self-help/problog/lifehack blogosphere), one can’t overlook what is probably the most important paragraph.

We can’t get good at something solely by reading about it. And we’ll never make giant leaps in any endeavor by treating it like a snack food that we munch on whenever we’re getting bored. You get good at something by doing it repeatedly. And by listening to specific criticism from people who are already good at what you do. And by a dedication to getting better, even when it’s inconvenient and may not involve a handy bulleted list.

[From Real Advice Hurts | 43 Folders]

I’m a serial “student of” things. From radio control airplanes, to web design/development, to writing fiction, to playing guitar and many other things, I become interested in a subject, and study the crap out of it until I know it far better than I have any need for… but until I start doing it, the knowing doesn’t do me any good. I’ve come to this realization on my own I know, because I stopped subscribing to magazines on action subjects. Five years of reading about RC flying, or writing fiction, is much less likely to get you any better at the action than just spending a month focusing on doing it.

With writing especially, I struggle with the doing. There aren’t any magic bullets that will give me more knowledge on writing theory and suddenly make me a better writer, I know enough of the basics (and even some of the “advanced” concepts) that spending my time reading about writing, is a waste. My current writing project is not fiction though, so I’ve found another way of keeping myself from doing and that is “research”. With a non-fiction project you have to do research, though I suspect maybe I’ve done enough research to commit to writing some now too. I think I’ll give myself a handy bulleted list.

• Butt in chair
• WRITE!