In a recent Wired article, Gilberto Gil discusses the responsibility of being a musician: More than a sound, though, tropicalismo was an attitude. It was, in Gil’s words, “no longer a mere submission to the forces of economic imperialism, but a cannibalistic response of swallowing what they gave us, processing it, and making it something [...]
Archive | November, 2004
Choice
Tired of giving M$ all your money for a productivity suite? Well, contrary to what you might think, you do have a choice. Try AbiWord, a beautiful free alternative to Word, or OpenOffice, a free office solution. Both read and write popular formats, so you won’t be living on a computing island all by yourself. [...]
Digital Archives: The Problems of Preservation
The NYTimes has an article that addresses the difficulties of preserving current digital information, including your email, digital photos, and word processing documents, for any real length of time, like one-hundred years or more. Jim Gallagher, director for information technology services at the Library of Congress, said that the largest problem “is that machines and [...]
Reflections 2004
Earlier this month, I received an email from a member of the PTA — also a former student — asking me to judge this year’s Reflections literature contest for Houston Country High School, here in Central Georgia. I gladly accepted, and the judging was today at the school. We had to compete with a cheerleading [...]
Online Literature: A Response
I recently received a letter from a colleague that asks some pertinent questions concerning my difficulties with teaching literature online. I have been sloth in responding, but answering his questions might help and encourage me to think about these issues a bit more. I will quote parts of the letter and make responses. As I [...]
Theocracy?
We may be in serious trouble. Gary Wills, in his NYTimes op-ed piece, asks “Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?” Even more radical and paranoid is this speculation. I mean, I thought it was Central Georgia; am I to believe the [...]
Losing Faith
It could be serendipity, or just the really cruel irony of an equally cruel deity, but hearing T.R. Reid discussing his new book The United States of Europe on Fresh Air yesterday got me thinking about the state of this country and the election that seems caught in a dead heat this morning. Apparently, the [...]
