Ouch

The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them.
-Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer

Adventures in Open Software

I really like the attitude behind open software -- programs made on what amounts to the wikipedia model, (though open software came before wikipedia). The idea of making a program's code freely available so that people can not only download the program for free, but work and collaborate on improving it if they wish -- or even just customizing it for themselves -- is really refreshing. Especially when compared to monolithic corporations designing their program's code, keeping it a secret, and asserting ownership over it. It's the kind of networking and mutual empowerment that actually seems to fulfill the promise of the Internet -- as opposed to most of the stuff that actually goes on the Internet. (I'm still not sure how to react to the fact that Facebook has replaced pornography as the greatest use the Internet is put to).

I assume most of us are pretty familiar with Mozilla Firefox, an open-software program that's at least as good as Internet Explorer or Safari (I like it better than both, personally). A program I recently started using is OpenOffice, which is designed to be able to be an open-source substitue for Microsoft Office and related products. The nice thing is that it can read and save in a number of formats, including Microsoft's .doc extension, (as well as its own open format, .odt). So far I'm quite happy with it, though its endnotes function isn't quite as flexible as I'd like; certainly I prefer it to the latest version of Microsoft Word, which I just find confusing and annoying.

I've been less successful with trying to switch to using .ogg files instead of .mp3s. Apparently several companies have tried to assert ownership of the mp3 format, and the most successful one has managed to collect millions of dollars in royalties for a format people use for music files every day. (A little like charging radio stations and their listeners for using a certain Hz to encode and pick up their signal). I've tried downloading a couple of media players featuring .ogg files, but have been pretty dissatisfied with them. They won't display what album a song is from, have bad playlist functions, (an important organizational tool at least for me), etc. There are add-ons for iTunes that allow you to play .ogg files but then you can't burn them to cds. (You can't load cds in that format either, but there is freeware that will do it; what I couldn't find was anything that burned cds).

It's possible that there are solutions out there, but after downloading four or five programs to try and make the .ogg format work for me — all on dial-up — without any success, I threw up my hands and gave up. At least for now it's mp3's for me, even if I don't like it.

As far as I'm concerned, the onus is on Mac (and Windows, but I know less about that, and Mac does a reputation for being user-friendly and relatively progressive) to actually make a file format like ogg work in its player, what with it becoming an increasingly common format for savvy and freedom-loving computer users, as well as the format sites like wikipedia use. It's stupid and short-sighted that iTunes can't play and perform other normal functions with .ogg files to begin with, and that even after the add-ons many of the regular functions don't work in spite of the open programmers' best efforts. Purely from a selfish, capitalistic viewpoint, you'd think it would actually be in iTunes interest to use, if not push, an open format like ogg, instead of using a format that is owned by another company.

But what do I know...

Touché

"Remember, it's our common embrace of unknown groups that makes us so individual."
-"Tristan Lovecraft"

The whole article from Insta Goth Kit is pretty hilarious, but this was a particular gem.

And it reminds me of this comic from Nothing Nice to Say



]

Girls, women, and ladies

My girlfriend recently expanded on some thoughts from an earlier post. Ever a fan of concision, she actually prefers the shorter earlier version, but I definitely found the additional material interesting. Here it is:

I decided the other day that I would rather be called a woman than a girl. I think that calling adult women 'girls' infantilizes and disempowers us. A girl is a child, weak, impressionable, requiring paternal supervision and guidance, unable to look after herself. A woman, on the other hand, is an adult, strong, competent, independent. A girl is somebody that a man can control; a woman is someone who can stand up to him, doesn't need him, and won't take his crap. When was the last time you saw a sign at a strip club that said "Women!?" You didn't, because they all say "Girls!"
Our culture still tends to deny that women are women. Take the ideal of female beauty that is thrown at us every day ... how much body hair is a woman supposed to have? None! Who doesn't have body hair? Young girls. And how old, exactly, is a woman supposed to look? As young as possible. What is the problem with a woman who looks like her hormones are actually functioning properly? Really, what is the problem with that?
I recently took over at work for a middle-aged man, and I have encountered a certain amount of ... paternal bemusement from some of the men with whom I now have to interact. I'm certain that they didn't chuckle when my predecessor phoned to place an order. I'm certain that they didn't wag their fingers at him, admonishing him to be on time in the morning, because they would be waiting (I have yet to show up late). The fact is I am pretty, female, and look no more than my 24 years. Clearly I am no one to be taken seriously. Clearly I am not a woman ... I am a girl, to be patronized, tolerated, and completely out of place in a position of responsibility. I am the 'girl' behind the counter.

I am not going to apologize or pretend that I am not what I am. I am not going to go along with people who want to pretend I am anything other than that. I am a woman. I am intelligent, educated, competent, I'm completely capable of taking care of both myself and, if need be, others, and I even have body hair. I'm not going to be horribly offended when somebody calls me a girl, but I think a culture that hesitates to call women what they are is one that is still afraid of what they are. I think that kicking the 'girl' habit is a small way of erasing the persistent paternalism that, at this point, really shouldn't be informing us any more (not like it ever should have to begin with, but we can't change that).

Sidenote: What about 'lady'? Lady is a tricky one. I often call my friends 'ladies'. On the one side of things, a lady can be a really awesome person. She can be mature, intelligent, have character and self-possession. 'Lady' can definitely be used as a term of respect. On the other hand, I don't hold much truck with 'lady' when it has to do with being ladylike, or when it comes in the form 'young lady'. God knows being ladylike involves a lot of pretending to be what you are not. 'Ladylike' requires that one give up feeling comfortable, having a good time, and being interested in sex. And a young lady, of course, is little more than a girl.
I think in the end I am pretty ok with 'lady'. I do not appreciate the term 'young lady', and I certainly will never be ladylike, but when it connotes a mature woman with a full character, then I think it can be a very respectful or complimentary term. I don't mind being a certain type of lady ... but only that certain type.

Something to look forward to

In Praise of Amateurism

An amateur is someone who does something for the love of it (amator means 'lover' in Latin, which is why amour means 'love' in French).

Amateurs only care about the activity, enjoying it, and (sometimes) sharing it with others. There is no other motivation. They are not shaped by market forces, nor do they have to bother living up to some hierarchical set of 'professional standards.'

Roland Barthes has suggested that a 'completely de-alienated society' (something possible only in theory) would be a society of amateurs -- unlike our society, which is a society of consumers. (He said this in The Grain of the Voice).

It still sounds like an ideal worth working toward to me. So let's raise a glass to amateurs and lovers everywhere!

And let's stop using 'professional' as a synonym for 'good' -- 'conditioned wage-slave' might do as well, I think. (Though let's be gentle, and think -- not say -- that, and more with compassion than contempt... We all have to make a living somehow, now don't we?)

Form and Function (Doing things the right way)

"Every time I am shown to an old, dimly lit, and, I would add, impeccably clean tolet in a Nara or Kyoto temple, I am impressed with the singular virtues of Japanese architecture. The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet truly is a place of spiritual repose. It always stands apart from the main building, at the end of the corridor, in a grove fragant with leaves and moss. No words can describe the sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in mediatation or gazing out at the garden. The novelist Natsume Soseki counted his morning trips to the toilet a great pleasure, 'a physiological delight' he called it. And surely there could be no better place to savor this pleasure than a Japanese toilet where, surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood, one looks out upon blue skies and green leaves.

As I have said there are certain prerequisites: a degree of dimness, absolute cleanliness, and a quiet so complete one can hear the hum of a mosquito. I love to listen from such a toilet to the sound of softly falling rain, especially if it is a tiolet of the Kanto region, with its long narrow windows at floor level; there one can listen with such a sense of intimacy to the raindrops falling from the leaves and the trees, seeping into the earth as they wash over the base of a stone lantern and freshen the moss about the stepping stone. And the toilet is the perfect place to listen to the chirping of insects or the song of the birds, to view the moon, or to enjoy any of those poignant moments that mark the change of the seasons. Here, I suspect, is where haiku poets over the ages have come by a great many of their ideas. Indeed one could with some justice claim that of all the elements of Japanese architecture the toilet is the most aesthetic. Our forebears, making poetry of everything in their lives, transformed what by rights should be the most unsanitary room in the house into a place of unsurpassed elegance, replete with fond associations with the beauties of nature.
- Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, a twentieth century novelist, in his book In Praise of Shadows (Leete's Island Books, p. 3f)

Contemporary tea master Soestsu Yanagi says that "The Way of Tea is a way of salvation through beauty."

-quoted in Rand Castile's The Way of Tea (Weatherhill, 1971), p.82