So, yeah, I tried out that one product.

To answer your immediate questions:

1) Yes, but probably not in the way you are expecting.

The unit, as you might have guessed, looks flawless.

And while seeing a dog skateboard on the portable system is probably exciting to someone somewhere (actually, people were pretty engrossed in a video of a pet penguin with a penguin backpack), it was the multi-touch interface that evoked the most audible gasps. The hand-scrolling felt intuitive and reactive and immediately rendered every other computer imput device obsolete. Minority Report was the pop culture touch-stone that came to mind.

Yes, in the future, we will all be Tom Cruise.

2) Not really, but I am not the target demographic: namely, consumers with large amounts of disposable income. Still let's hope trickle-down theory applies to technology.

Also I hear the carrier's mobile service is atrocious.

3) Unlikely. Although one of the store's employees was so engrossed in the machine, he failed to help, let alone acknowledge, some of the customers. [Arguably, without the unit, he probably would have just been absentmindedly staring out into space.]

In the hands of most mortals with a modicum of control this shouldn't be a problem.

Ben, on the other hand.

iM sick of it

I am not a technophobe, nor am I a luddite, but I am upset about the iPhone. I felt this way when the iPod video came out (who needs video on the iPod? Isnt the iPod good enough as it is? I understand color and album art, but TV shows?) I swore I would never buy one, but then I did when my second generation iPod crapped out on me for the third time (I replaced the battery twice).

I like new gadgets. I think they are fun and useful and interesting and cool. I was the second person I know to get an iPod, actually (Andrew Stillman was first). I love cell phones--I think they are the most useful invention of my lifetime (aside from Dance Dance Revolution, of course).

So why am I so pissed about the iPhone? I myself use a Blackberry and an iPod, and I like them very much, so why wouldnt I want to have the units combined in a sleek, sharp Apple package?

Well, that's just it. I do. And I hate myself for wanting it. I'm perfectly fine without it, but I still want it. I could easily convince myself that I need it. And that's bullshit. It's like Malibu Stacy. Lisa makes that new Lisa Lionheart doll, and everybody thinks its great, until Malibu Stacy comes out with a new hat. She's got a new hat! I need the Malibu Stacy with the new hat! Yeah, right. I need her new hat like I need flipflops with a built in bottle opener. My emotions and needs are at the strategically designed whims of Apple's technological innovations.

And as much as I enjoy new technology, I am somewhat pessimistic about its cultural implications. We are retreating further inward. We stare at what's in our hands more than the person next to us, but we consider it interaction because it's a new form of communication. I wonder what it used to be like on the subway--before most everyone was plugged in to their iPod, or responding to email, or playing PSP. I wonder what we are losing. I think ones sense of immediacy is totally out of wack. What is immediate is the world around you, but when the world is in your hand, everything else becomes secondary. My cousin asks me to look at a picture she just drew and I tell her, hold on, I have to respond to a text message. I mean, why talk to the person next to me when I can google chat with Ben? Why look at the world around me when I can watch Grey's Anatomy on my iPhone? Why listen to the sounds of the city when I can..... You get the point.

The iPhone is hardly to blame. Obviously I can do all these things without one. Maybe I'm so upset because the iPhone sets the bar higher. It's an example of the kind of technology that we don't have yet, but will have soon. It's a technological turning point.

I can't say I will never buy an iPhone, because I probably will. But in the mean time, I think it's bullshit.

LO-BENMIX96.3: Radio from Hell

1998. New Year's Eve. Salt Lake City.

The turn of the calendar was always eventful in Utah: The spontaneous dance parties. The fines for disruption of the peace. The adolescent heartbreak. The Martinelli's.

Yet what I remember most about that night was the radio. Of speakers blasting X96's countdown of the top songs of the year.

1998 was a pivotal year for me. It was the first year I could drive and with spatial and temporal freedom (ie. not having my social schedule dictated by my parents' unreasonable sleep patterns) also came free reign over the radio dial. Between zine culture of the 80s and cybercommunities of the 00s, the radio was the primary vector through which we were exposed to new music [with proper respects paid to The Box].

Listening to the radio was, of course, a haphazard affair; musical Russian Roulette. For every Eve 6 there were a dozen Everclears (yeah. oh yeah. repeat ad nauseum.). But that was a part of the charm about listening to the radio: a larger sense of the local community's musical demography. Of some jerk-off at the local Little Ceasar's requesting Everlast on their lunch break.

In typical bloated "Back in my day..." rhetoric, I believe that 1998 was possibly the most diverse span of radio during our adolescent years. Alternative rock had started to break free of Generation X malasie and grunge's cultural hegemony to find a sense of quirk and levity. Who could have predicted that five years after "Heart Shaped Box", a Canadian band rapping about anime and the X-files would top the Modern Rock Charts? This was that awkward phase when rock groups recruited DJs as permanent members of the band.

And that whole swing revival? Under what ill-fated moon was this even possible, let alone popular?

Yet, beyond these dated relics are some of the finest singles of the decade. Even though the lyrics may have been blurred out (and had no actual relevance to our lives), "Semi-Charmed Life" perfectly captured that post-grunge moment -- it is the soundtrack to students finally being released from high school bondage (although Can't Hardly Wait poorly chose the excruciating "Graduate").

For what it's worth, X96's #1 single of the year was "Intergalactic" by the Beastie Boys -- which dovetailed perfectly into our own world as Andy Nelson had reappropriated the song for his own devices, transforming the chorus to "Intergalactic-Kill-Cathy-Anderegg" in minor revenge for his poor English grade. No objections from any of us.

Ben and I spent a lazy afternoon sifting through tracks to populate this mixtape, trying to recreate an hour or so slice of X96 broadcasting in 1998. There was a wonderful sepia-toned feeling of nostalgia about the whole enterprise -- Of skipping out on 2nd Black to hit up Costas. Of frisbee and slurpees at Reservoir Park.

Of repetitions of the unrepeatable.

Like a pinch on the neck of Mr. Spock:

1. The Way - Fastball [All The Pain Money Can Buy]
2. The New Pollution - Beck [Odelay]
3. Semi-Charmed Life (Radio Edit) - Third Eye Blind [Semi-Charmed Life Single]
4. My Hero - Foo Fighters [The Colour And The Shape]
5. One Week - Barenaked Ladies [Stunt]
6. Flagpole Sitta - Harvey Danger [Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone?]
7. Zoot Suit Riot - Cherry Poppin' Daddies [Zoot Suit Riot]
8. Circles - Soul Coughing [El Oso]
9. Sex and Candy - Marcy Playground [Marcy Playground]
10. Love Fool - Cardigans [First Band on the Moon]
11. Fly - Sugar Ray [Floored]
12. Inside Out - Eve 6 [Eve 6]
13. Closing Time - Semisonic [Feeling Strangely Fine]
14. Brick (Radio Edit) - Ben Folds Five [Brick Single]
15. Bittersweet Symphony (Radio Edit) - The Verve [Bittersweet Symphony Single]
16. Your Woman - White Town [Women In Technology]
17. What I Got - Sublime [Sublime]
18. The Impression That I Get - Mighty Mighty Bosstones [Impression That I Get]
19. Walking On The Sun - Smashmouth [Fush Yu Mang]
20. Shimmer - Fuel [Sunburn]
21. Intergalactic - Beastie Boys [Hello Nasty]

With a sky blue sky, this rotten time, wouldn’t seem so bad to me now

Sky Blue Sky is the best album created in my lifetime. And Wilco is the best band of my lifetime.

End of story.

Sati-arrr!

The Most Controversial Game You’re About To Hear About

It’s now official. For the first time that I can remember, a mainstream video game-- Manhunt 2, from Rockstar Games of Grand Theft Auto fame--is going to receive the dreaded AO (Adults Only) rating from the U.S. ESRB and it will be banned from sale in the U.K.

More surprising, it’s the Nintendo Wii version that’s causing the controversy.

To catch you up to speed, Manhunt 2 is the sequel to the moderately-received Playstation 2 game in which you were basically living out a variation of the “classic” movie Running Man. You’re being hunted, and you have to kill all of your hunters in order to survive.

Manhunt 2 continues the basic concept but with one major difference (on the Wii at least): gesture based control. So instead of pushing the right analog stick forward and pressing “X” to slit someone’s throat. You’ll act out the maneuver with your Wii-mote and Nunchuk.

As the game’s critics argue, that’s about as close to a murder simulation as you could get right now. So rating the game AO makes sense.

But is that enough reason for an actual ban in the U.K. and an ostensible ban in the U.S.? (An AO rating guarantees that major retailers like Target, Wal-Mart and BestBuy will NOT carry it.)

I don’t know.

I'm never a fan of censorship.

But, on the other hand, I think the idea of the game is reprehensible. And if this story, with it’s significant censorship implications, gets picked up by the mainstream media (which I’m confident it will) I’d be willing to bet it will goose the game’s sales.

The original Manhunt only sold "okay." And this game would have been similarly forgotten... but now it’s been granted an immortal spot in video game lore.

Or it least, I believe soon it will.

Give it away now...

How bad are things for the PS3?

Bad enough that BestBuy––in a promotional tie-in with Sony––is essentially giving them away.

In related news, I still haven’t seen a Wii in the “wild.” It's still selling like mad. (Even though I've only turned mine on once since March.)

An uneasy thought

I returned from work hungry. I skipped lunch. There are few vegan options in Midwood, Brooklyn. Cuisine choices are glat kosher pizza or jerk chicken. Usually I eat Thai when getting home late, but I spent the previous evening investigating a mice infested yogurt shop on the Upper East Side, so I was inclined to eat in.

I heated a can of black beans and some tortillas. I heard a sound coming from the corner. I thought it was a drip. I investigated. It was not.

It was a small beetle caught in the web of a spider. What produced the clicking sound I don't know for sure. It was some act of force by the aggressor or aggressed. It kept happening. Kept clicking. I turned on my radio to forget the sound and finish cooking.

My dinner complete, I went upstairs to eat and discuss the day with my cousins. Between 27 and 52 minutes later, I returned my then empty plate to the kitchen. Still clicking were the spider and beetle.

That's when the uneasy thought came to mind. "How can I help the spider?"

This shook me. Why the spider? The one who set the trap? The one trying to kill? I tend to regard myself as someone who pulls for the other guy. The victim. The underdog.

Yet there I was. Trying to help a spider.

Sailing to Byzantium

Cormac McCarthy + the Coen Brothers = $

There is no god.

Nell and Joe sat together even then...

OPINION: lolocaust

Delicious satire or internet meme gone too far?

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.

I have few idols.

I am a historian; we are trained to be scholastically prudent.

Yet I was enraptured with Richard Rorty from the very first text I read of his, Philosophy as a Kind of Writing: An Essay on Derrida. We shared the same passion for post-Nietzschean continental philosophy: we loved Hegel's historicism but hated his philosophical idealism; we admired Derrida's playfulness but were weary of his search for the ineffable. Above all, we shared a mistrust of Kantians and their notion of (scientific) truth as a locatable and eternal object. Instead, we countered that all values are historically contigent, and no manner of evidence will ever be able to satisfy all audiences. That there is not a set of beliefs that all will find intuitively plausible.

In short, he introduced me to an entire school of thought I had initially discounted: pragmatism.

Rorty defined pragmatists as those who "do not believe that there is a way things really are... [and who] want to replace the appearance-reality distinction by that between descriptions of the world and of ourselves which are less useful and those that are more useful." This notion of utility is the operative word in pragmatic philosophy. It is a post-Darwinian concept; an aimless term void of any progressive or teleological direction. Of growth for its own moral end. For pragmatists, the conceptual metaphors are of width rather than depth, of increasing complexity rather than proximity.

As such, pragmatists believe "there is a potential infinity of equally valuable ways to lead a human life, and that these ways cannot be ranked in terms of excellence, but only in terms of their contribution to the happiness of the persons who lead them and of the communities to which these persons belong."

Rorty helped me see the connection between phenomenological Hegelianism and our own American post-modern bourgeois liberalism -- a personally profound and inspiring juxtaposition that wedded my Nietzschean abhorrence for all things Kantian with the very un-Nietzschean values of a philosophical pluralistic and secular society.

And so it was with a heavy heart that I found out that Richard Rorty had passed away over the weekend.

One could argue that his career was a process of sweeping away what Dewey called "the whole brood and nest of dualism" we inherited from the Greeks -- between essence and accident, substance and property, and appearance and reality.

Rorty's principle virtue as a philosopher was his accessibility. Even while discussing the densest of topics (ie. the Heideggerian notion of "getting beyond metaphysics"), he always managed to distill the material into simple and comprehensible language without sacrificing its original complexity.

Even in his arguments with critics, Rorty was never condescending and his writing was always polite -- and dare I say it, democratic: a sort of stylistic manifestation of his belief in philosophical pluralism and the need for inter-subjective agreement. There was never any hint of egoism with Rorty. Instead, he positioned himself behind his philosophical idol Dewey and draped his arguments in the disarming (and charming) first person plural [eg. "we pragmatists disagree" or "we coherentists are divided"].

Perhaps above all, Rorty should be remembered for his unflagging insistence on hope -- of his conviction in the openness and placicity of humanity and its ability for deliberate self-creation. And of his sheer exuberance for the potentials of a plural, secular democratic society.

To end this eulogy, here are the parting words from Rorty's auto-biographical essay Trotsky and the Wild Orchids:

"The democratic community of Dewey's dreams... is a community in which everybody thinks that it is human solidarity, rather than knowledge of something not merely human, that really matters. The actual existing approximations to such a fully democratic, fully secular community now seem to me the greatest achievement of our species."

No Joke

Exhibit A

And B:

ickleback - If Everyo

From underneath the trees, we watch the sky *.*
Confusing stars for satellites :-?
I never dreamed that you'd be mine
But here we are, we're here tonight {{{{ :) }}}}

Singing Amen, I, I'm alive :DDDDD
Singing Amen, I, I'm alive ;)))

If everyone cared and nobody cried xx :...(
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride :/
Then we'd see the day when nobody died 0:-)

And I'm singing :O

Amen I, Amen I, I'm alive
Amen I, Amen I, Amen I, I'm alive 8-D

And in the air the fireflies ~~~
Our only light in paradise
We'll show the world they were wrong :X
And teach them all to sing along :O :O :O

Singing Amen, I, I'm alive :O
Singing Amen, I, I'm alive
(I'm alive)

And as we lie beneath the stars
We realize how small we are ._.
If they could love like you and me <3<3<3
Imagine what the world could be ^_^